NHS Digital Enables Secure Innovation with the AWS Cloud

Sarah Wilkinson, chief executive officer of NHS Digital, delivered a keynote address as part of the AWS Public Sector Summit Online 2021. NHS Digital designs, builds, and operates the digital products, data systems, and services for the national healthcare system in the United Kingdom. Wilkinson shared how the elastic infrastructure in the AWS Cloud helped them deliver new products and scale existing services at an extraordinary rate in response to COVID-19. The peak load of one key system in the early weeks of the pandemic was 95 times its highest ever previous peak load.

Maintaining reliability and security has been critical as NHS Digital introduces changes at a faster rate than ever before, and these efforts are serving as a springboard into the future. “There is so much more energy and ambition for digital transformation within the NHS now than there was a year ago. And because digital services have been consumed at such pace, and with such positive impact, there is a level of confidence about the journey ahead that is incredibly exciting,” said Wilkinson.