Dr Mark Ratnarajah
Clinical Director, Sword IntelligenceAI In Healthcare Conference: On the eve of NHS ConfedExpo 2026, Dr Mark Ratnarajah joined senior NHS, policy and health technology leaders at a private UKHLSI and Sword Intelligence dinner in Manchester to discuss how artificial intelligence can help the NHS move from queues to coordinated care. This article reflects on why the NHS must now look beyond abstract debates about innovation and begin redesigning services around the operational capacity that AI can already provide.
Beyond the AI in Healthcare Conference Conversation
There is a ritual familiar to anyone who has spent time in NHS leadership. You attend the conference. You absorb the keynotes. You collect the lanyards, the policy language and the optimism. Then, on the journey home, the weight of the actual waiting list settles back over you.
That is why last night’s conversation mattered.
It was not another session about artificial intelligence in the abstract. It was not a room full of people rehearsing familiar arguments about innovation, transformation or future potential. It was a practical discussion about what is already possible, what is still getting in the way, and what the NHS now needs the confidence to do differently.
I have been in and around the NHS for nearly thirty years, as a practising paediatrician, as an investor and as a builder of health technology companies. The most useful conversations I have had about transforming healthcare have rarely happened in conference halls. They happen around tables, after hours, when people stop speaking in official language and start speaking plainly about what is actually broken.
That was the value of last night.
The NHS does not lack people who care. It does not lack clinical expertise, managerial commitment or a deep understanding of the pressures facing patients and staff. What it does lack, too often, is the operational infrastructure to match the scale of the challenge.
Across England, millions of referrals are still processed through systems designed for a paper-based world. Outpatient waiting lists persist not only because of clinical capacity constraints, but because of the administrative friction that surrounds care – the appointments, triage, follow ups, referral management and coordination tasks that consume time before a patient is ever seen.
From AI Debate to Delivery at NHS ConfedExpo 2026
This is where agentic AI changes the conversation.
Intelligent agents can now support care coordination at a scale and speed that no human workforce could realistically replicate. They can read referrals, triage risk, manage appointments, identify exceptions and surface the moments where clinical judgement is most needed. This is not about replacing clinicians. It is about removing the coordination burden that has built up around them over decades.
Last night’s discussion made clear that the question is no longer whether this technology can work. It is whether we are prepared to organise services around what is now possible.
That requires more than curiosity. It requires commitment from the people who sit across policy, delivery, technology and government. It requires NHS leaders to see operational redesign not as a side project, but as one of the central routes to better access, better productivity and better patient care.
Freeing Clinicians to Focus on Judgement and Care
The deeper question is not technical. It is human.
If intelligent agents take on more of the routine coordination work, what are we freeing people to do? What should clinicians, managers and leaders be spending more of their time on? In a system where the routine can be automated, the exceptional becomes the domain of human expertise – prevention, complexity, relationships, judgement and leadership.
That is a future worth building towards.
Last night was a reminder that the gap between the NHS we have and the NHS we need is not only a funding gap or a workforce gap. It is also an imagination gap – and, at times, a willingness gap.
The conference may continue today, but the most important work began in the room last night: a serious, honest conversation about how we move from queue to care.
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Photo: Dr Mark Ratnarajah and The Right Honourable Andrew Stephenson CBE
Sword Intelligence are members of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) https://intelligence.sword.com/. UKHLSI organised the dinner at NHS Confed Expo in partnership.