Healthcare Cyber Shield: Securing the Federated Data Platform and Supply Chain

Ransomware attacks on the NHS aren't hypothetical anymore — they've happened, they've taken down critical systems, and they've forced hospitals to relearn how to operate under pressure. This panel goes straight to the source, bringing together national cyber leadership and a CISO who has lived through a real attack to share the hard-won lessons on restoring patient administration systems and protecting endpoints when the worst happens.

• What actually happens in the first 24 hours of a major NHS cyber incident
• Real recovery lessons from a Trust that restored critical systems after a live attack
• How incident response firms help hospitals triage and contain damage under extreme pressure
• What NHS England and the Joint Cyber Unit are doing to strengthen national-level resilience

Resilience, honesty, and preparedness define this session. Join us to explore how the NHS can learn from real attacks to build defences strong enough for the next one.

Unifying patient records into a single federated platform promises huge gains for research and care coordination — but only if the public trusts it enough to allow it. This panel confronts the tension between data ambition and patient privacy head-on, bringing together regulatory, governance, and patient-advocacy voices to ask what "ethical data pooling" really requires.

• Where the line sits between valuable research access and unacceptable privacy risk
• What the ICO expects from NHS organisations pooling data at national scale
• How ICBs are building governance structures that protect patient confidence, not just compliance
• The patient-privacy perspective: what genuine public trust in data sharing actually looks like

Trust, transparency, and integrity anchor this entire conversation. Join us to explore how the NHS can unlock the power of shared data without ever asking patients to compromise on privacy.

Every app, remote monitoring device, and third-party platform connected to the NHS network is a potential way in for attackers — and the health service now depends on hundreds of them. This panel tackles one of the most underappreciated cyber risks in healthcare: the sprawling, fast-growing HealthTech supply chain feeding directly into critical NHS infrastructure.

• Why third-party vendors represent one of the NHS's largest and least visible attack surfaces
• How DTAC assessment criteria are evolving to catch risk before vendors ever connect to the network
• An ICB's perspective on balancing innovation adoption with supply chain security
• What proactive supply chain risk management looks like at scale across hundreds of vendors

Vigilance, scrutiny, and control run through this whole discussion. Join us to explore how the NHS can innovate with HealthTech partners without leaving the back door open.

A centralised digital health platform only works if patients actually trust and use it — and that trust can't come at the expense of the people least able to access it. This panel explores the dual challenge of building public confidence in online health portals while ensuring digital inclusion doesn't leave vulnerable groups behind.

• What it takes to build genuine public trust in centralised digital health tracking
• How the NHS App programme is balancing security, usability, and adoption at national scale
• Practical strategies for digital inclusion among patients who are offline, elderly, or digitally excluded
• The patient charity perspective: what accessible, trustworthy digital care actually looks like from the outside in

Access, trust, and dignity sit at the heart of this session. Join us to explore how the NHS can build digital platforms that work for every patient, not just the digitally confident.