By Alice Donovan-Hart, Director of Consulting, NHS Shared Business Services
The Prime Minister’s recent speech at London Tech Week set out an ambitious vision for a country that leads in artificial intelligence, strengthens sovereign capability, and delivers public services transformed by digital innovation.
It’s a vision few would disagree with. But if, as a country we’re serious about turning it into reality, we must focus not only on innovation itself, but on the operational infrastructure that enables it to scale safely, effectively and in line with public priorities.
Too often, sovereign AI capability is framed in terms of compute power, datasets, and cutting-edge models. These are essential foundations, but they are not sufficient by themselves. True sovereign capability is defined not just by what the nation can build, but by what it can deploy, govern, integrate and sustain across its most complex public systems.
There is no more complex or critical system than the NHS.
As one of the largest public service organisations in the world – deeply interconnected, highly regulated and fundamentally dependent on trust – the NHS presents both the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity for applied AI. Success here is not theoretical. It is operational.
For over two decades, NHS SBS has operated at this intersection. Purposefully designed to combine public sector accountability with private sector delivery capability, we bring together the governance, assurance and public value expected of the NHS with the agility and execution needed to deliver transformation at scale. As a trusted partner to the NHS, we provide finance, procurement, HR, and digital services across hundreds of organisations, supporting thousands of staff and managing billions of pounds of public expenditure.
Today, that role is evolving.
We are not only enabling transformation; we are coordinating how it happens across systems, services and organisations, moving from isolated tools to end-to-end orchestration. In that sense, the NHS SBS model is increasingly relevant to the national AI agenda: providing a practical route to innovation that is scalable, governed and sovereign by design.
NHS SBS is uniquely positioned to translate national ambition into practical delivery through three core capabilities:
- Orchestrating AI across end-to-end services
AI delivers its greatest impact when it connects workflows, not just automates tasks. By integrating AI across finance, procurement, workforce and operational systems, NHS SBS enables organisations to realise value across entire processes, rather than in silos. - Embedding AI into enterprise platforms
Through strategic partnerships, we are embedding AI capabilities within the core systems already used across the NHS. This accelerates adoption, reduces duplication and ensures that innovation is grounded in operational reality. - Ensuring trust, governance and sovereign control
In health, trust is non-negotiable. NHS SBS operates within the NHS’s rigorous governance frameworks, ensuring that AI solutions meet the highest standards of data protection, ethical use and financial accountability. That combination of strong public oversight and disciplined delivery is what makes AI adoption safer – not only technically, but institutionally – and better aligned to the government’s wider ambition for sovereign capability in critical public services.
The next phase of AI adoption in the public sector will not be defined by standalone tools or pilots. It will be defined by the ability to integrate AI into end-to-end processes, connecting workflows across organisational and technological boundaries. This is where real value is unlocked.
Increasingly, delivering this requires deep alignment with the platforms that underpin day-to-day operations. That is why NHS SBS has built strategic partnerships with leading enterprise technology providers, including Salesforce, Oracle and UiPath, enabling us to embed AI directly into the systems our customers rely on.
This approach is deliberate. It is not about introducing complexity, but orchestrating ecosystems – ensuring that AI enhances entire value chains rather than optimising individual tasks in isolation.
It is also what makes transformation more resilient and more dependable: innovation delivered through structures that are already accountable to the public and connected to national priorities.
Turning strategy into tangible impact
Ultimately, AI transformation only matters if it changes the lived experience of staff and patients.
It means the neonatal nurse on a night shift can order critical supplies quickly and confidently, knowing they will arrive when needed.It means stretched finance teams can automate labour-intensive processes, freeing up thousands of hours to focus on higher value work.
It means referral pathways that once took 40 minutes can be completed in five, unlocking clinical time at scale across entire systems.
These are not isolated improvements. At scale, they represent system-level transformation, releasing capability, improving outcomes and strengthening resilience across the NHS.
From ambition to leadership
The question is no longer whether AI can transform public services. It is whether we are ready to deliver it in a way that is connected, governed and scalable.
NHS SBS already sits at the heart of this challenge – working across organisational boundaries, integrating platforms and connecting strategy with delivery. Our founding model, built to combine public sector accountability with private sector delivery capability, gives us a distinctive role in helping the NHS adopt AI in a way that is both ambitious and safe – anchored in public trust, aligned with government priorities, and capable of delivering at scale.
By combining operational capability with strategic partnerships and a focus on end-to-end orchestration, we are helping to define what sovereign AI looks like in practice.
If we get this right, the NHS will not simply adopt AI. It will lead the world in how to deliver it safely, at scale, and with meaningful impact where it matters most.
