George Stern, Enterprise, Connectivity & Security Specialist at Cloud Gateway, on why secure, scalable networks must underpin the next decade of healthcare
The NHS 10–year plan signals bold ambitions: shifting care into communities, moving from analogue to digital and rebalancing the system toward prevention. The plan pledges that the NHS will become ‘the most AI-enabled health system in the world’, with a unified patient record accessible via the NHS app and digital tools that free staff from routine administration.
Photo by Cosmin Serban / Unsplash
These are positive ambitions, yet all too often digital transformation is envisioned in terms of apps, AI, data and workflows. Network infrastructure and the connectivity, visibility, resilience and security considerations that underpin every digital interaction are often relegated to the background. In an environment of legacy systems, fragmented estates and rising cyber threats, that neglect is a strategic risk.
Networking must therefore be reframed as clinical infrastructure, a core enabler of safe, efficient and resilient care delivery well into the future. Industry leaders must address this now to make the 10-year plan a reality. So what are the key elements to consider? What are the most urgent issues to address and how can networking underpin the NHS’s digital future?
Legacy drag: data silos and fragmentation
Across trusts and integrated care systems, many networks remain anchored in decades-old architectures. These legacy estates often include isolated local area networks (LANs), outdated switches, ageing multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) links and piecemeal virtual private network (VPN) deployments. They perpetuate data silos and impede interoperability, hindering cross-trust collaboration and game-changing population health analytics.
Yet the 10-year plan depends on integration. It states that ‘anyone with an NHS number will be able to access their health data via a single patient record’, and that digital and technology investment will underpin the shift to ‘digital by default’. Modern, high-performance, interoperable networks are one of the key puzzle pieces that will realise the ambition of a truly unified record.
This interoperability is also key to the government’s idea of ‘neighbourhood health’ being a central pillar of its future vision for the NHS. Although this concept can take on many different meanings depending on the context, essentially it is a group of ideas and policies focused on integration, place-based and community-led care. In some form of another, it has been put into practice in many places already through initiatives such as health and community hubs aimed at addressing health inequality. By aligning services and sharing information, we start to eliminate the data silos that constrain the NHS and move towards far-improved health outcomes for our communities.
The visibility gap
Still, there are many more places that we can start to improve health outcomes through a strong digital foundation. In many NHS estates, real-time visibility is currently fractured. Monitoring tools might be fragmented with one tool for core switches, another for wireless, a third for WAN and others for firewalls. Add to that shadow IT services such as unapproved appliances proliferate unchecked. The result can be blind spots that hamper troubleshooting, prevent capacity planning and weaken threat detection.
Leaders need a unified, cross-domain view of network flows, device health and user behaviour. For example, observability platforms can detect unusual lateral movement consistent with a breach. A drive for more robust visibility is critical not just for IT teams. It is central to patient safety, security and continuity.
The 10-year plan also envisages devices, wearables, AI diagnostics, remote monitoring and seamless clinician workflows all converging on digital platforms. AI diagnostics and remote monitoring especially will increase bandwidth and low-latency demands.
Networking as national clinical infrastructure
Healthcare remains a top target for cyber attackers, and networks are a key frontier. Security is more than just an afterthought; it is an essential piece of the puzzle. The 10-year plan speaks broadly of transparency, data protections and innovation pathways, but leaders must view network security architecture as a priority.
We routinely think of scanners, ventilators or operating theatres as core infrastructure. The next decade demands we think of networks in the same class and treat them accordingly. The NHS 10-year plan positions digital as a backbone of care, but successful deployment requires national co-ordination, the right prioritisation of funding and an architectural vision.
The plan does commit to capital funding for infrastructure and IT, and sees it as essential to delivery. It also explicitly elevates the NHS app as the ‘front door for all healthcare services’, setting out a target that by 2028 a unified patient record will be accessible through that portal. Leaders must ensure that dependable connectivity permeates throughout trusts across the country, and that extends beyond NHS buildings and into patients’ homes. Being connected to vital healthcare is absolutely critical and will only become more so as the NHS is driven towards digital maturity.
Trusts and ICBs must plan network upgrades as core business, not discretionary IT projects.
The backbone of a digital empowered NHS
Collectively we know that healthcare delivery must shift from analogue to digital, from hospitals into homes, and from reactive to preventive. But the ambitious vision of the 10-year plan that includes AI-driven hospitals, a unified record, digital front doors and truly resilient community care hinges on something far less visible but no less vital. Network infrastructure is the real linchpin that will be the foundation of the resilience we all envision.
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) acts as a key part of that foundation, providing an extra layer of future-proofing to ensure the NHS continues to perform digitally for many years to come. Introduced at a pace that suits NHS teams and without causing disruption to live operations or services, SASE ensures that information is created, accessed, and transmitted in a secure, scalable and trusted manner. Healthcare workers can access information from anywhere, giving them increased operational agility and allowing for more effective responses to dynamic situations.
Healthcare leaders who treat networking as invisible plumbing risk systemic failure: delays, vulnerabilities and fractured experiences. Those who instead recognise networks as clinical infrastructure will chart a course toward safe innovation, service resilience and long-term sustainability.
In the decade ahead, the NHS must no longer ask what technology we can deploy, but how we can build a digital backbone that allows the NHS to thrive and, ultimately, patient care to excel.
For more, see Cloud Gateway.
In related news:
Leave a Reply