2025 predictions: Health tech suppliers on what’s in store

With a new government, more than £2bn promised investment for NHS technology and the forthcoming 10 year health plan, there is a growing sense of anticipation about what lies in store for the digital health sector in 2025.

Digital Health News asked health tech suppliers to share their thoughts on seven hot topics for the new year: digital transformation; integrated care; cyber security; leadership and teams; startups;  AI and data, and smart health.

Read on for their predictions and expectations for 2025:

Digital Transformation

Markus Bolton, director, Graphnet Health

 “As the UK healthcare system moves towards 2025, the focus will be on harnessing the power of population health data to drive transformation.

“The government’s 10 year health plan, set for release in spring 2025, highlights three critical shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. Central to this vision is the improved use of data to predict, prevent, and manage health.

“Programmes like Combined Intelligence for Population Health Action (CIPHA), already covering 11 integrated care systems (ICSs) and 17m patients, are set to expand significantly.

“By aggregating vast amounts of population health data, these programmes enable healthcare systems to identify at-risk individuals earlier, target interventions, and reduce reliance on reactive hospital care.

“This data-driven approach will make it possible to intervene before conditions escalate, improving patient outcomes and alleviating pressure on hospitals.

“In 2025, we will see a continued shift towards using real-time population health insights to guide decisions, enabling more precise care and resource allocation.

“Remote monitoring for long-term conditions will also play a key role in managing population health, helping to reduce hospital admissions and improve quality of life for patients.

“The future of the NHS hinges on scaling these data-driven, preventative strategies across ICSs, making 2025 a critical year for digital healthcare innovation.”

Paul Volkaerts, chief executive of Nervecentre

“In 2025, continuing financial pressures will mean the importance of digital delivering on promises of macro-economic productivity gains will start to become a primary factor.

“This will mean business cases that treat digital as an enabler for transformation, without measuring or being held accountable for the promised benefit, will shift towards programmes that will be held accountable for the financial and productivity gains promised within the timeframe of the programme.”

Jason Jones, global customer manager, healthcare at Rackspace Technology

“Healthcare organisations need to be able to integrate between workloads and improve patient outcomes, but all these things require flexible, agile, affordable and sustainable infrastructure at the back end, and the private cloud is very well-positioned to offer that.

True digital transformation in healthcare requires deep, systemic change and a rethinking of traditional workflows, roles, and interaction points

“Integrating private cloud solutions offers significant operational efficiencies, including streamlined patient data management, enhanced telehealth capabilities, and advanced big data applications for disease management.

“Additionally, a scalable and secure digital environment can be created for managing electronic patient records (EPRs) and facilitating the secure sharing of data – whether that be medical imagery or data from medical wearables.

“However, true digital transformation in healthcare requires deep, systemic change and a rethinking of traditional workflows, roles, and interaction points.

“For healthcare to be truly effective in 2025, cloud technology solutions must be embedded within the organisational culture, requiring continuous education and alignment with overall strategic goals.”

Paul Charnley, senior healthcare advisor for St Vincents Consulting  

“In 2025, transformation will remain the cornerstone of progress for the NHS. Almost all transformation initiatives now have a digital component, but digital must serve as a supporting element to clinical and operational change, not exist as a standalone effort.

“Embedding digital tools into these broader transformations is essential to achieving meaningful impact. Financial pressures will persist, and while it’s too early post-election to anticipate major investments in digital, the guiding principle of moving from analogue to digital will endure.

“With over 90% of NHS providers covered by EPRs the focus will shift from go lives to stabilisation and optimisation.

“Yet, significant analogue systems remain, underscoring the importance of ‘thinking digital’ to enable true transformation.”

Integrated Care

Steve Wightman, general manager – Health, The Access Group

 “We can expect the 10 year health plan to become the framework for which everyone discusses digital next year.

“For it to genuinely help fix the NHS, integrated care boards (ICBs) need to drive-out siloed examples of tech – that cause duplicate investments and workforce inefficiencies on a local level – and drive-up ecosystems that deliver integrated care. Not just in the NHS, but across social care too.

“Effective steps include linking frontline digitisation with other tech strategies such as Technology Enabled Care (TEC), championing preventative care such as social prescribing and encouraging clinicians and care professionals to work closer together.

“Only then can innovations such as AI be deployed across the board. And these digital solutions collectively deliver operational efficiencies, more personalised healthcare and meet government’s ‘shift’ objectives.

“The industry has long been ready to deliver. 2025 has to be about helping healthcare organisations finally make the ‘tilt to technology’ at scale.”

Dr Rachael Grimaldi, cofounder and chief executive of CardMedic 

“With the anticipated 10 year health plan due in spring 2025, I have cautious optimism that the Labour government can deliver on their NHS funding promises.

“While increased funding is crucial, the real challenge lies in transforming rhetoric into reality through streamlined processes and standardised procurement procedures.

“The healthcare system desperately needs genuine reform that benefits SMEs and innovators, bridging the current disconnect between frontline clinical needs and NHS operational capabilities.

“Central to this transformation is the role of integrated care systems in breaking down traditional silos, particularly when it comes to vital services like healthcare interpretation and patient communication – areas where collaboration between trusts can significantly enhance patient experience and safety.

“There’s been too much disparity between ambitious promises and practical implementation – what we need now is meaningful alignment between innovation, procurement, and delivery across integrated care systems.

“My hope is that in 2025 we can create tangible pathways that enable real transformation in how the NHS operates, procures and implements change.”

Charlotte Donald, chief care officer, Cera

“Lord Darzi’s NHS review highlighted the need for better integration between health and social care, showing that a disconnect between the two often leads to ‘the most expensive outcome’ for families and the NHS.

“Joining up services is vital to build a more sustainable model of health and social care, and digitisation is absolutely central to the solution.

Joining up services is vital to build a more sustainable model of health and social care, and digitisation is absolutely central to the solution.

“The consensual, carefully regulated sharing of patient health data is also key—with 75% of patients now supporting the idea of sharing some of their health data to drive healthcare reform.

“When patient data is logged and stored digitally, it can be more easily accessed across systems and services, joining up the patient experience across health and social care.

“This will drive up care quality, drive down costs, reduce the pressure on the NHS and save and improve countless lives.

“I hope 2025 will be the year the basic work of digitisation will be more rigorously applied in health and social care—but digitisation alone is nowhere near enough.

“To truly reform health and social care, we need to harness technology, and in particular, AI: a whole new revolution which can transform productivity, prevention and patient impact, all while reducing the cost of care.”

Leadership and Teams 

Lawrie Kidd, clinical transformation manager at DrDoctor

“2025 has to be the year in which ICS boards prioritise long-term process change.

“Strong leaders at the helm of dedicated teams are essential to drive the kind of strategic decisions needed to join the dots between primary and secondary care and develop a clear roadmap for large-scale implementation of innovative solutions.

“To achieve this, we must give those teams the time, tools, and support to prioritise critical rollouts, while also transforming the digital infrastructure on which these solutions depend.

Strong leaders at the helm of dedicated teams are essential to drive the kind of strategic decisions needed to join the dots between primary and secondary care

“The right leadership can ensure these innovations – which have the potential to address some of the NHS’ most pressing challenges – are not doomed by IT or process failures.

“My concern for next year is that resistance to the risks of change will continue to hold us back. Yet, the NHS’ digital and physical infrastructure is already creaking under pressure.

“The government has pledged additional funding – now it’s up to us to ensure it’s used wisely, with leadership and implementation at the forefront.”

Phil Bottle, managing director, SARD

“In 2025, smart trusts will focus on gathering forensic-level management information to inform strategic decisions around capacity and demand. This granular insight will enable leaders to balance productivity with patient safety and staff wellbeing.

“Beyond improving decision-making, this approach will drive a critical cultural shift by bringing planning and operational delivery closer together.

“With clear, actionable data, trusts will align long-term workforce strategies with day-to-day realities to create more cohesive and adaptive systems.

“Uniting planning and operations, which are traditionally siloed functions, will enable leaders to pre-empt staffing pressures, optimise resource allocation, and foster environments where staff feel supported.

“My hope is 2025 will be the year when informed leadership bridges the gap between planning and execution, proving that productivity and wellbeing can both be achieved by aligning data-driven insights and strategy.”

Startups

Dr Mark Ratnarajah, UK managing director, C2-Ai

“Health tech companies should be able to ‘start-up and scale-up’ in supporting the NHS with innovative technology: a pledge direct from Wes Streeting at an Association of British HealthTech Industries parliamentary reception in November.

“As 2025 dawns, the latter part of his statement – scale – is particularly important: both for companies providing the tech, and for the NHS itself.

“Policy momentum has placed significant emphasis on wider adoption. NHS England wants to address both the discoverability and deployability of technologies.

“Lord Darzi calls out the need to address sub-scale uptake of applications that improve quality and efficiency.

Health tech companies should be able to ‘start-up and scale-up’ in supporting the NHS with innovative technology

“And the newly published innovation ecosystem review led by Professor Roland Sinker calls out the need to spread “proven products”, with a failure to do so risking unwarranted variation and a perception that companies investing will struggle to grow.

“With urgency to embrace technology equitably, the NHS can little afford the time and effort required to reinvent ad infinitum. The bar must be set high in choosing what to scale.

“But once innovations are proven in the field with evidence in clinical practice and academic rigour, then funding and mechanisms must be in place to scale at pace, and everywhere so that all patients can benefit. 2025 must be the year to make this happen.”

Dave Burrows, founder and chief executive, Damibu

“Sadly, examples of health inequalities will continue as the current single-design approach to service provision struggles to serve different patient groups and demographics effectively, especially given the wider systemic pressures.

“The publication of the NHS long-term plan and the growing influence of ICSs next year creates an opportunity to use tech to provide more personalised care, including using digital information platforms at a regional level to make services accessible to different cultures and minority groups.

“These solutions are already helping providers, particularly in the community, offer tailored variations of health information and improving engagement with services.

“And with the expected shift of services upstream – to primary and community care – it’s vital that commissioners use these proven solutions to make quick and scalable changes to serve all of its patients.”

Dr Chris Evans, cofounder and chief executive of Little Journey

“As a clinician turned CEO of a digital health company, I’ve seen first-hand how technology can transform healthcare—but only when it’s implemented thoughtfully.

“With that in mind, 2025 won’t be the year of radical AI takeovers or instant solutions. Instead, it’s about laying solid foundations and refining what’s already working.

AI remains a huge talking point in healthcare, and rightly so—it has the potential to revolutionise diagnostics, treatment planning, and patient support. But the gap between the promises of AI and its safe, evidence-based implementation is still significant.

“In 2025, the focus will be on accelerating the infrastructure, governance, and regulation needed to introduce AI responsibly. Ethical data use, algorithm transparency, and practical integration into clinical workflows must take precedence over flashy, large-scale rollouts.

“Much like the early days of digital health during the pandemic, this will be a period of piloting and learning that will evolve over years.

“Ultimately, 2025 is about progress, not perfection. For AI, it’s about putting the right structures in place to unlock its potential safely.

“For digital health, it’s about moving from generic tools to personalised, integrated solutions that make healthcare better for patients and clinicians alike.”

Cyber Security

Chris Scarisbrick, deputy managing director for UK and Ireland, for Sectra

“The world is a more dangerous place as we head into 2025 – carrying with it sustained risks for high value targets, healthcare included.

“Reports that cyber attacks have “plateaued” have also been accompanied by Digital Health News headlines showing the human cost associated with service disruption, delayed care, and even harm – when systems are compromised.

“The technology sector serving healthcare should therefore be prepared for increasing requirements around cyber credentials in the coming year; and arguably should take a more proactive approach.

“Cloud-based provision – which is continuing to grow at pace in diagnostic imaging – can help, where the cyber expertise of large cloud providers can be leveraged in ways not possible on-premise.

“But we must also adopt best practice at every point possible as suppliers – whether that’s compliance with Cyber Essentials Plus, IS027001, or CSA STAR accreditations. Such compliance needs to transcend throughout supply chains – to ensure every link is as strong as it needs to be.

“2024 has been a year of substantial digital progress in healthcare diagnostics. We have a collective duty – across the health service, and as suppliers, to safeguard that progress against cyber adversaries.”

Chris Clinton, cofounder and chief technology officer, Naq

“Cyber attacks on NHS organisations will continue to increase and so expect demands for better cyber hygiene in primary, secondary and tertiary care to come from the National Cyber Security Centre and the Department of Health and Social Care.

“But the question is, will the increased expectations be matched by the budget to support them?

“To date, suppliers have not been routinely asked about their security status by all NHS organisations due to lack of resource on the buyer side. Expect this to change.

“In 2025 there will be greater rigour in expectations for digital health suppliers to demonstrate their security and compliance status. Next year, if you want to supply HMG, you will need to get your cyber house in order before engaging.

“The switch, from the Digital Security Protection Toolkit to the Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF) as a security framework for digital health technology suppliers will likely lead to confusion, especially for the vast number of smaller innovators.

In 2025 there will be greater rigour in expectations for digital health suppliers to demonstrate their security and compliance status

“Whilst the CAF allows more scope for flexibility, most innovators don’t want flexibility or interpretation, they want clear guidance and instructions.

“Alongside this, we can expect additional questionnaires coming down from central government, in an attempt to strengthen security.

“But this approach does not ensure the continuous security posture of suppliers, and so sadly we may learn about more successful cyber attacks on our health services.”

Leon Lerman, chief executive and cofounder, Cynerio

“2024 marked a pivotal year for healthcare cybersecurity, with global regulatory advancements like the UK’s CAF, the EU’s NIS2, and the US’s HPH cybersecurity performance goals.

“Hospitals now have clear guidelines to follow, shifting the focus from ‘what to do’ to ‘how to implement’.

“This acceleration will likely drive the adoption of modern security solutions in 2025, particularly those capable of detecting and responding to attacks.

“At Cynerio, we’re excited about the future of network detection and response for healthcare (NDR-H).

“This AI-powered technology is specifically designed to address the unique security challenges of hospitals, offering an efficient and effective layer of defence.

“As NDR-H gains global traction, it is poised to significantly enhance hospital security postures.”

AI and Data

Jacob West, managing director, healthcare & life sciences, Microsoft UK

“As we enter 2025, we find ourselves at an inflection point where AI breakthroughs are going to dramatically change and augment how we work and live.

“The past 18 months has seen the emergence of one of the most transformational technologies yet witnessed, generative AI, powered by large language models. These AI models are already helping with tasks like content summarisation, document management, and streamlining process flows.

“As this technology continues to rapidly mature, we are seeing encouraging signs across the NHS of trusts experimenting with generative AI tools to reduce administrative burden, craft patient communications and summarise consultations.

“2025 will be the year where we see NHS trusts truly embrace these generative AI technologies, maximising time to care and delivering even greater patient outcomes.”

Rhett Alden, chief technology officer, health markets at Elsevier

“The increasing use of AI will continue to fuel the digital transformation of healthcare and create positive impacts for clinical decision making and productivity.

“Generative AI will begin to free clinicians to spend more time on patient care and conceptual tasks and less on repetitive tasks, like searching for information.

“To answer a complex question, a clinician may need to spend 15-30 minutes researching diagnostic and treatment information, but with a tool that streamlines access to high quality, deep reference data, a clinician could answer that same question in seconds.

“AI will also begin to play a more prominent role in analysing patient records, lab results, and documents to develop more personalised treatment options or recommendations. These can help address potential gaps in care as well as ease the burden on clinicians.

“Amidst this growth, it’s important to focus on responsible AI principles and keep a human oversight component.

“Going forward, there will be a stronger focus on developing frameworks to ensure the ethical and equitable use of AI in healthcare.”

Dr Nadine Hachach-Haram, founder and chief executive of Proximie

“Looking ahead to 2025, the expanding capture of anonymised data will allow greater, more accurate and faster diagnoses with data which – in turn – will be applied to developing new procedures and devices. This will improve the patient experience and support medical training.

“Of course, these advances have been developed over many years, but 2025 will see an increased embrace of AI technologies as they progress out of the proof-of-concept stage into sustained usage.

“We should all hope governments and corporates are ready to meet this challenge and utilise AI and machine learning solutions at material scale, recognising they significantly improve healthcare productivity.

“The results will positively influence the world’s progress in meeting massive demand for qualified surgeons, doctors, nurses, healthcare specialists, and more advanced medical technology.

2025 will see an increased embrace of AI technologies as they progress out of the proof-of-concept stage into sustained usage

“Pent-up demand for solutions providing healthcare cost savings and efficiencies should drive greater investment into the sector.

“This will yield value creation opportunities for the private sector while benefitting patients via improved healthcare productivity and accelerated medical innovation.

“In the UK, the government is keen to accelerate technological adoption to reduce backlogs and rationing – demonstrated by the ringfenced £2n investment in digital technology for the NHS announced in October’s budget.

“With fresh capital and strategies to optimise the benefits of technical innovation, we should see healthcare productivity improving – a positive for the entire sector.”

Smart Health

Kate Quirke, chief executive officer, Alcidion Group Limited

“Accelerated maturity in generative AI, large language models, and emerging technologies that can help automate labour intensive tasks, could all help to address NHS challenges heading into 2025.

“Discussion at Digital Health Rewired 2024 surprised some delegates, who learned of a 2024 ranking of the world’s top smart hospitals. It positioned its first NHS trust at number 72.

“Set against a drive to advance beyond the ‘foothills of digital transformation’, as was described by Lord Darzi, smart health, applied well could now make a meaningful difference to big policy commitments such as productivity gains, but also to daily pressures.

“There is an appetite, and an urgency, to do things differently.

“Generative AI, for example, has the potential to redefine how clinical teams interact with technology and transform the patient experience.

“Natural language processing and conversational interfaces will make electronic patient record systems more intuitive, reducing cognitive burden and the risk of burnout.

Smart health, applied well could now make a meaningful difference to big policy commitments such as productivity gains

“Imagine a clinician speaking naturally to an AI assistant to generate detailed summaries, write handover notes, draft prescriptions, or retrieve critical patient history – all in seconds.

“As smart technologies mature, integrating them into clinical settings and clinical technology platforms, can release substantial time, but can also harness vast amounts of clinical data to support and enhance every decision for patient care.”

Alison Gardiner, founder and chief executive, Sleepstation

“NHS league tables will likely permeate discussions about performance, productivity and funding allocations next year.

“While previous attempts at similar models have faced criticism (and it’s vital the government learns from these lessons), the principle of scaling proven services that deliver the best results for patients and providers is one we should champion.

“This method will enable commissioners to effectively navigate the plethora of smart health and remote monitoring tools available.

“To achieve significant shifts in health, including analogue to digital, the government must leverage existing opportunities to enhance productivity and clinical outcomes. Specifically, by looking to exemplars who have already digitised care pathways at scale.”

Dr Travis Bias, chief medical officer of clinician solutions, health information systems, Solventum

 “This year will be an opportunity to take stock of the realistic applications of AI and how those can support the health workforce. 

“The excitement around AI is settling back down to earth and the surprise around how impressive large language model (LLM) based chat tools can be is wearing off. Now that we know that LLM’s can chat about almost any topic; create a draft clinical note from a recorded patient-physician conversation; or reliably handle a variety of administrative tasks such as letters to specialists or electronic responses to patients, we will see health system stakeholders ask what comes next.

 “This year will see a growing effort to focus on change management efforts guiding the people side of the implementation and uptake of AI applications. Without end users understanding how and when to leverage AI, these tools will not be optimally leveraged. 

“Further upstream from that we will see appropriately heightened efforts to understand how certain AI applications were built, with the maturation of AI governance efforts at organisations large and small, along with a laser focus on how such applications can help improve population health outcomes and patient safety. 

“Finally, we will ideally expand how we measure success with AI applications, moving beyond financial returns-on-investment and including a focus on qualitative wins, such as improved health workforce experience, wellbeing, or retention. Because if AI is simply used to propagate existing systems or processes, we will have massively missed our opportunity to use such capabilities to re-think how clinicians interact with and serve patients.”