MING TANG, on Delivering the 10-year Digital and Data Strategy for NHS England

In Partnership with KPMG

It’s not every day you get to hear from someone who’s data leadership role has the ability to positively impact so many people’s health, but Ming’s does. 

Leading on data and analytics work in National Health Service (NHS) England, she’s also recently stepped in as interim Chief Digital and Information Officer.

Despite being such a busy person, she kindly found time to talk to us about her focus on driving digital and data transformation in the NHS, including her part in the government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England. 

We discovered more about what this plan means for the future of a healthcare service that has been part of our history for over 75 years, and what has helped Ming become the leader she is today.

A background that propels her forward

The daughter of non-English-speaking parents, Ming’s first role was in a takeaway – which she credits with helping her progress in her career, “I’m quite proud of my working-class background. 

“Growing up working in a takeaway helped me to connect with different people from all walks of life and to learn how to assert myself with strangers from a young age. It made me more confident and more assertive, allowing me to be myself as a woman in a man's world.”

Ming explains, “I was one woman amongst many men for a long time in my career. In the NHS, there’s probably more women in leadership positions than I've seen anywhere else I’ve worked.”

With a pharmacy degree as her foundation, Ming began her career in pharmaceutical production. She then broadened her experience across multiple sectors, including consumer goods and retail, steadily advancing from consultant to Senior Partner at Accenture. Ming further distinguished herself by completing an MBA before embarking on her journey with the NHS in 2009. Since then, she has ascended to key leadership roles within NHS England, where she continues to drive transformative digital initiatives.

Ming attributes her success to a powerful combination of personal dedication and access to exceptional mentors and professional development. As she remarks, “I've been very fortunate with coaching and also with the training and development I've received.” Nonetheless, it is evident that her advancement has been equally driven by her own hard work, sharp intellect, and strong leadership abilities, all of which have propelled her to the senior roles she now holds.

So, what advice does she have for other women hoping to follow a similar path, we wondered? “Hold your own, make sure that you're being straightforward and you've thought through the logic for why you deserve to be heard. Being firm, frank and direct I think always helps.”

She reflects, “I am quite straight talking. I don't wait to be invited to speak. It’s important for me to get my content or my views across at the right time to get the decisions needed to move things forward.”

Part of the driving force behind the 10 Year Health Plan 

Together with Tim Ferris, Ming co-chaired the Data and Technology Working Group for the 10 Year Health Plan, which set out to transform the NHS. Its three key focuses are: care in the community, digital empowerment and focussing on prevention.

“Data and digital underpin the whole of the 10-year plan,” Ming points out. “If you think about the shift from hospital to community, in order to enable that you need a much more multidisciplinary team and you  need the right digital tools and data to underpin all of that. 

“How do you work with local populations? How do you target people that are vulnerable? How do the health teams work with social care? This all requires effective data sharing and they need the platforms and tools to do that.” 

“One of our key commitments is the development of a comprehensive single patient record—an integrated, longitudinal health record accessible to individuals through the NHS app. This will empower patients to view and actively contribute to their own health data. For instance, patients using wearables or devices such as continuous glucose monitors will be able to supplement their NHS record with data from these sources, providing a richer, more accurate picture of their health and treatment needs. As Ming underscores, “It’s essential to understand the trends over time, not just isolated data points, when managing people’s health.”

Ming continues, “The most important thing is putting the infrastructure in place to give people the right data to inform their decisions. That may be decisions about the individual, there may be decisions about our health services, there may be decisions that help the clinician refer the patient to the best place, or it may just be providing trusted information through the NHS app about the patient’s health condition so that they're more reliably informed. By digitising this flow of information, we can put people’s health at their fingertips, giving them access wherever they may be – at home or work” 

Having this data stored in one place will also support patient information to be shared more easily between different teams within the NHS, such as community and hospital teams. Something that teams can sometimes struggle with now. 

This single record will ensure that all of a patient’s important health information is accessible to clinicians across different care settings. Patients will no longer have to repeat their story to every professional they encounter, making their care more seamless and coordinated. Ultimately, it’s about making patients feel understood—not processed—throughout their healthcare journey.

Using data and digital to prevent illness

With prevention as a central focus of the 10 Year Plan, the information in a patient’s record can be harnessed to proactively identify risks and support earlier interventions—helping prevent illness before it starts, rather than simply treating it. This approach aims to avoid unnecessary medicalisation by prioritising prevention and wellbeing.

Ming refers to the mental health of children and young people as one example, “Some of that population may not want to see someone about depression, but they may respond better to an app that allows them to work on some behavioural or lifestyle changes.”

While there are lots of apps already available for download, such as sleeping tools that help track sleeping patterns and that give advice, the sheer amount of them can make it confusing for people to choose which app to use.

“What we want to do in delivering the 10 Year Plan is make sure these tools have been clinically assessed through NICE [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] and made available through the NHS app, so that people have a trusted source of assessed apps.” 

“Longer term, if the regulator NICE decides that a digital treatment is effective and cost effective, then in the future GPs might be able to prescribe it, or people might be able to self-refer to get it on the NHS. 

“So, these are the types of things we're creating: an ecosystem of apps, as well as suppliers who can then work together to get a much better offering for the public.”

Upgrading the digital infrastructure 

With so many ambitious goals in this plan, strengthening the NHS’s digital infrastructure is essential. Currently, hospitals operate at varying levels of digital maturity, so levelling up is crucial to ensure consistent cybersecurity measures, timely updates, and a flexible, resilient IT environment across all care settings.

Ming explains, “One thing we're looking at is a data platform that allows us to take data from source systems into a more secure, flexible environment, so that information can be made available across the NHS – so it's not locked into a particular system in a particular trust.” 

“Connecting the NHS in this way will help us share data and to automatically trigger important ‘events’. For example, if you’ve been to a clinic to have your screening, you can trigger a notification to your GP automatically rather than having to rely upon sometimes clunky integration between systems. 

"Establishing strong digital foundations means getting our data and IT assets in order, with cybersecurity as a top priority—especially given the prevalence of outdated legacy systems. Where legacy technology exists, we need clear strategies for replacement, identify which core services should be provided nationally, and offer guidance to local teams on what they should buy locally. This coordinated approach is key to steadily raising the level of digital maturity and resilience across the NHS." 

Looking towards newer tech

A lot has been said about how AI could help improve healthcare. With the huge amount of patient data in the NHS, how will advanced technology be used in decision making and patient care—while still keeping that data safe and private?

“A big part of the 10-year plan is to look forward”, Ming tells us. “There are huge advances in agentic AI and Large Language Models as well as some of the machine learning type of modelling that we’ve done previously.

“What we learned during COVID was that machine learning models are great, the algorithms are great, but you need to be able to explain them, because you still want the human judgement of those models. So, we're applying this same technique with the AI Large Language Models.”

“One thing you have to carefully consider with AI is where the end point is – because some of these Large Language Models make information available on the web. So, we've locked down the endpoints because we don’t want patient data going on the web. 

“We've created investment in a data platform which then allows you to apply AI onto it, in a secure place, where we can explain what's happening with those models. 

“And then our analysts and data scientists are looking at what the monitoring framework is for those models, so that we've got guardrails in place. Ming points out, “We will probably take it fairly slowly. The NHS is fairly risk averse and it's clinical, so, we’d probably be looking at augmentation first, then looking at how that model is working before we attempt automation. 

“We probably won't ever automate for clinical care, but we may do something like enabling digital triage for a 111 call,” Ming explains. 

111 is the non-emergency phone number in England that gives people access to health advice and treatment. 

She continues, “There will be an algorithm that’s more agentic which passes you onto the right person, based on the symptoms you have. 

“There will be different ways of doing different things, but it’s really important that we have the data layer well curated, we have the infrastructure to make sure it’s secure and safe, and then anything that we apply on top of this, we’re monitoring.”

Supporting staff to embrace change

It’s clear that this is a time of significant change for the NHS and its hard-working staff. While in the long-term these changes will create benefits for both the patients and the workforce, we wondered about the short-term impacts in terms of supporting staff through change, and the time it takes to train already busy teams to use new processes and platforms. 

Ming shares, “We often focus on tech, data, and digital tools, but the real benefit is in how we can deploy them to streamline what we do—reducing unnecessary handovers and improving processes to make clinical pathways more effective and efficient. This represents a significant process change and requires collaboration from different people and teams coming together.” 

“We’re creating digital platforms to support better coordination across the UK healthcare system. For example, when a GP refers a patient to community services, community nurses can clearly see what the doctor has requested and have access to clinicians both in community and acute hospitals. These connections will increasingly be enabled by technology, but currently, the process is still quite manual and varies from place to place. That’s why, as we introduce new technology, it’s essential to ensure that everyone receives proper training in these updated ways of working.

We believe in co-producing these solutions—bringing together technology teams, end users who will be affected by the changes, and process redesign experts to shape the best approach together.

A lot of our recent work with the Federated Data Platform has focused on transforming processes. For example: How do you efficiently schedule theatre appointments? How do you plan ahead? What can technology do to keep all the necessary information up to date, so you’re not relying on paper, emails, or texts to coordinate care?

It’s really about managing the logistics of care, which means supporting people as they adjust to new ways of working. Training is key, but it shouldn’t just be one-off sessions—it’s just as important to have support teams available on the ground while staff are adapting to these changes. And, of course, it helps tremendously when digital tools are intuitive and easy to use.” 

Ming uses the example of smartphones, and how we don’t have a lot of training to use them – instead, effort goes into creating an intuitive experience that’s simple to figure out as we go along. 

A similar approach is being used to create a more seamless digital experience for clinicians. An example of this is when clinicians look at their waiting list patients in the electronic patient record. Previously they’ve needed to go into each individual patient record, which takes time, but now the data has been drawn together so clinicians can look at it as a complete list and do the prioritisation using a drop-down box. This is a change in the process, but the design makes it intuitive, faster and simpler.

The importance of partnership to progress

Ming explains that the 10 year plan isn’t only thinking about innovation in terms of technology, but as a whole topic in itself. That means there’s a need to consider who the NHS collaborates and partners with – as well as what the incentives are for this, and importantly, how do they remove some of the friction of working well together.

“We've listened to a lot of things that people said are really difficult about working with the NHS. We've tried to solve some of those issues through the thinking that we've done to determine what needs to change” Ming explains.

She continues, “A lot of our suppliers will say it's quite difficult to get into the NHS, particularly if you're a small entrepreneurial type of company. Part of our thinking is how do we create open standards? How do we create access to the platforms and the data models so that people can develop applications that are suitable for specific patients, or hospitals, or the community, then work with our NHS colleagues to develop it, and then how do we scale that?

“So, once it’s been developed, it's been assessed and it's been approved, how do we then create the shop window so that other organisations can buy it without having to go through a massive procurement process?”

There’s another aspect to this, too, which Ming and the wider team need to consider. “Being part of wealth generation is important for the NHS going forward. This government is insistent that the NHS becomes a driver of economic growth for the country, given that we're such a big portion of the budget, about 40% at the moment.

“By making our data available through the Health Data Research Service, we will be able to improve patients' access to new treatments with clinical trials. And we’ll also encourage pharmaceutical companies or Medtech companies to come to this country to develop their products, or academics and other entrepreneurs to use this data to train AI that can then be sold elsewhere.”

The availability of data to partners will also support the Plan’s focus on prevention, which we referenced earlier. “Making that data available for academia will also help make the case using effective treatments to help people get back to work. There is a proportion of the workforce off sick because they don't get access to a treatment, such as a musculoskeletal treatment, or because they’re overweight, or because they've got hip and joint issues.

“If we can be more holistic and preventative and we can work with people to help themselves, that will help them get back into the workplace.”

Ming clearly has the passion and expertise to help drive a period of significant and positive change that has the potential to impact so many people. And while this role is a long way from the takeaway that played such a big part in her early life, she hasn’t forgotten the skills she learned there. Down to earth, to the point and committed to service, Ming’s humble beginnings have served as an important stepping stone to the leadership role she now has helping to shape the National Health Service for tomorrow.