Meet the experts shaping the future of digital health and care. Our Judges Spotlight series showcases the vision and insight of the HSJ Digital Awards judging panel - leaders driving innovation, transformation and lasting impact across the NHS.
Discover Lee Rickles, Chief Information Officer, Humber Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust experience and advice for this year’s entrants below.
Tell us about yourself - what inspired you to get involved in digital health?
I’m Chief Information Officer at Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust and Director of Interweave, the platform supporting the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record. I’ve spent more than 30 years working in transformation and programme management, including around two decades focused on digital health in the NHS.
What drew me to digital health was the opportunity to make a practical difference to people’s care. Done well, digital can remove barriers between organisations, give clinicians better information at the point of care and make services easier for patients to navigate. My experience has reinforced that digital transformation is not primarily about technology. It is about people, leadership and redesigning services around patients and staff. That belief continues to motivate me, particularly where technology can improve inclusion, interoperability and the experience of people who can sometimes be disadvantaged by the way health and care services are organised.
From your experience in digital transformation, what approaches have made a lasting impact in health and care?
The approaches that last are those that start with the problem we are trying to solve rather than the technology we want to deploy. The strongest programmes bring clinical, operational, digital, data and patient perspectives together from the beginning and treat transformation as service redesign, not simply system implementation.
Interoperability is also critical. My work with Interweave and the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record has reinforced the value of joining up information across organisational boundaries, using standards and shared capabilities rather than creating another isolated solution. Equally important are strong leadership, realistic benefits measurement and sustained engagement with the people who will actually use the service. Successful digital transformation becomes part of everyday care, with staff understanding why the change matters and patients experiencing a tangible improvement. Technology is the enabler; lasting transformation comes from changing how we work together.
What digital innovation or trend are you most excited to see influencing the NHS in the next few years?
AI is probably the area I am most excited about, particularly when it is combined with good-quality data, interoperability and strong clinical governance. We are moving from experimenting with AI towards embedding it in everyday workflows. Ambient voice technology is a good example: used safely and responsibly, it has the potential to reduce the administrative burden on clinicians and give them more time to focus on the person in front of them.
I am equally excited by the combination of AI with shared records, the NHS App and increasingly interoperable platforms. The real opportunity is not simply automating individual tasks, but connecting information and services so that care becomes more proactive, personalised and joined up. We must, however, implement AI with the same focus on safety, inclusion, transparency and evidence that we expect from any other significant change in healthcare.
What have you learned from your time on the HSJ Digital Awards judging panel?
Judging the HSJ Digital Awards has reinforced just how much innovation is happening across health and care, often led by teams working under considerable operational pressure. I have previously judged the Digital Awards, including the Optimising Clinical Pathways through Digital category, and one of the things that stands out is that the strongest entries are rarely just about the technology.
The best projects demonstrate a very clear problem, genuine collaboration with clinicians, patients and partners, and measurable evidence that something has improved. They are also honest about the journey: what was difficult, what changed along the way and what others could learn from the experience. As a judge, you see that innovation does not need to mean a completely new technology. Sometimes the most impressive work is the intelligent application of existing digital capabilities to redesign a pathway, remove duplication or address an inequality. The Awards are a valuable reminder of the creativity and determination that exist across the NHS.
What one piece of advice would you give to teams preparing their entries to help their work stand out?
Tell us the difference your work has made, not simply what you implemented. Be very clear about the problem you were trying to solve, why it mattered and what changed for patients, staff or the wider system as a result.
Bring that impact to life with evidence. Use a small number of strong measures, such as time released back to clinicians, improvements in access or outcomes, reduced duplication, greater patient engagement or demonstrable financial and operational benefits. Where possible, compare the position before and after the intervention. Just as importantly, make the human story visible. Explain how patients and frontline staff shaped the work and what they experienced because of it. A judge should finish an entry understanding not only why the project is innovative, but why it matters and why another NHS organisation should want to learn from it.