Interview with: Rhys Morris, Chief Regional Officer, North and Mid Wales, and Head of Innovation - Welsh Government

Partner: The Welsh Government

May 21, 2026

This article is part of the “Behind the Scenes” series, in which the UNITE project partners introduce themselves and explain how they will contribute to the transformation of European healthcare.

What motivated you to join the UNITE project, and how does it align with your personal or professional goals?

Wales is one of the four nations of the United Kingdom, with a population of 3.13 million. The Welsh Government has responsibility for economic development and other devolved policy areas, including our National Health Service (NHS).  The Welsh Government’s budget for 26/27 is £27.5 billion.

As officials serving Ministers within our Government, we aim to deliver on its Programme for Government. Our International Strategy sets out Wales’s approach to international engagement, including an emphasis on co-operation with other European regions in areas of shared interest, like research and innovation.

The EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) provides a framework for our engagement with the EU, including the UK’s association to the Horizon Europe programme.  Therefore, teaming up with partners in the UNITE Digital Health Programme is a logical step towards realising our ambitions for both our economy and our health service.

This means we positively engage with European innovation networks which actually deliver collaborative activity.

Can you tell us about your team's expertise and how it contributes to UNITE's mission of transforming healthcare through digital innovation?

Rhys MorrisRhys Morris The Innovation Team within the Economic Development department is multi-functional, with diverse expertise. Our client-focussed staff work with businesses, academia and other organisations, including health care bodies, to work up bids into our SMART Flexible Innovation Support (SFIS) which we will use to match fund the UNITE calls.

Incoming applications are then rigorously appraised by officers and thereafter passed through to a monitoring function to ensure compliance and gather outputs and outcomes.

The Team also has an experienced operations function which will handle UNITE’s PR in Wales via comms and social media. It will organise any incoming visits from UNITE’s partner regions and contribute to relevant learning journeys and associated literature. It will also collate all UNITE operational activity and evidence for Horizon claims.

The Innovation Team will liaise with colleagues in the Health department to ensure that UNITE’s activities align with the Welsh Government’s aspirations and policies for the Health sector. Their input will be particularly valuable during the successive UNITE calls, ensuring projects contribute positively to the sector and avoiding any potential duplication of effort.

Officials within the Health Department lead on innovation and technology policy for NHS Wales. Our Innovation, Technology and Partnerships (ITP) Programme supports a national network of key delivery partners and an innovation support ecosystem to identify, test and scale innovation in support of ‘Wales Innovates’, our iInnovation Strategy. They work closely with the Digital team to develop new policy and strategy.

What are the most pressing healthcare challenges in your region, and how do you believe the UNITE project will address them?

Our statement on improving health and care performance identified the following:

Delivering the key Welsh Government priorities for the NHS:

  • Reducing waiting times (including ambulance patient handover)
  • Reducing Pathways of Care delays
  • Improving women’s health services
  • Strengthening how we run the NHS
  • Modernising leadership and culture
  • Getting better at regional working
  • Improving openness, accountability and collaboration
  • Getting services ready for the future
  • More effective prevention of ill health
  • Putting more services into the community
  • Realising the potential of digital and innovation

The UNITE innovation challenges can have a significant impact on many of these priorities.

How do you ensure that ethical considerations and patient privacy are prioritized in the development of new healthcare technologies?

Ensuring that ethical considerations and patient privacy are prioritised in the development of healthcare technologies in Wales is a multi-layered approach.  This combines legal compliance, formal governance structures, embedded design principles, and continuous oversight. Drawing on NHS Wales–specific frameworks and UK-wide standards, this can be described as a policy-ready model structured around some core mechanisms:

Statutory and Regulatory Foundations - adherence to legal frameworks governing patient data and confidentiality:
UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 require that all personal data is processed lawfully, fairly, and transparently, with a valid legal basis.

Data protection principles enforced in NHS systems include:

  • Data minimisation (only necessary data processed)
  • Purpose limitation
  • Accuracy and security of data

Wales operationalises legal requirements through a structured Information Governance system, led by Digital Health and Care Wales and regional boards.

Digital Health Technologies used within the NHS ecosystem are subject to assessments that explicitly integrate ethics and privacy:

  • Data protection
  • Technical security
  • Clinical safety
  • Interoperability
  • Usability and accessibility
  • data governance and security standards aligned with GDPR
  • Clinical Safety Standards 

How do you plan to engage with other consortium partners to ensure the smooth implementation of innovative solutions across regions?

Collaboration sits at the heart of how we plan to work with the other UNITE partners. Rather than treating innovation as something that happens in isolation, our focus is on building strong, practical relationships between regions so that ideas can move quickly from concept to real‑world implementation.

Knowledge exchange is a key part of this approach. Wales will both contribute to -and learn from- the experiences of other regions, sharing case studies, delivery insights, and policy perspectives through workshops, peer sessions, and joint communications activity. This two way flow of learning helps not only Welsh Government officials, but also the ideation and implementation of innovative solutions across large and complex health systems.

By keeping engagement practical, open and centred on shared challenges, we aim to make it easier for project teams to collaborate across borders and for innovations supported through UNITE to be tested, refined and implemented, maximising their long term impact well beyond a single pilot or location. This approach to knowledge sharing will depend on us bringing health services, industry and academia on the journey with us.

Our experience of handling numerous inter-regional collaboration projects within Vanguard Initiative’s VInnovate programme has demonstrated to us how well this open innovation model works.

How do you plan to involve local stakeholders, such as healthcare providers or policymakers, in the success of UNITE?

Wales has a well-developed and well-coordinated health ecosystem which is highly integrated with the Welsh Government.  Our key stakeholders and delivery partners include: 

Life Sciences Hub for Wales is our front door to the healthcare industry wishing to operate in Wales and our convenor and enabler of effective engagement and collaboration between our Health Boards, industry and academia.

Health Technology Wales (HTW) providing independent expert health technology assessment of new health and care health technologies with guidance on the value and benefits.

Regional Innovation Coordination (RIC) Hubs support and coordinate local and regionally identified innovation to support integration across the health and care system.

The Bevan Commission provides an independent “think tank” of international experts who offer advice and thought leadership.

Contracts for Innovation Cymru issue innovation challenge funds to support industry and collaborative partnerships with academia, health and social care partners.

We support the NHS Wales Innovation Leads network, in collaboration we developed a Health and Social Care Innovation Framework

Intensive Learning Academies (ILAs) are a Programme for Government commitment to increase and develop the digital and innovation capacity, skills and expertise across health and social care.

MediWales delivers communications and engagement platforms to align NHS Wales and Social Care staff with industry, academia and Government through annual innovation events, publications and awards.

Alongside these key stakeholders in the health innovation space, we will look to involve businesses and academia in the UNITE programme through continuous engagement.

What specific outcomes or achievements do you hope to see from UNITE in the next 4 years? 

Wales faces significant challenges across health and social care, including rising demand, workforce pressures, and the need to improve productivity and resilience while maintaining equitable access to services. Addressing these challenges requires not only new solutions, but a sustained commitment to research, development and innovation (RD&I) across the wider health and care ecosystem.

From an economic development perspective, our innovation strategy identifies Health and Wellbeing as a core mission and highlights the importance of enabling organisations to adopt, adapt and scale innovation effectively.

We see UNITE acting as key enabler here, readying Welsh stakeholders to not just collaborate, but also seek opportunities with key partners in ways they haven’t previously.

We’d like UNITE to be a catalyst for increasing Welsh participation in Horizon Europe and other strategic international initiatives. We’d like to further expand on the Welsh national health service’s procurement of cutting-edge innovation. We’d like to see the knowledge and capability within our universities used to better support our public sector, our SME’s and our large businesses for the improvement of both health outcomes and the economy. For our commercially minded stakeholders, we also see UNITE extending opportunities for Welsh industry to engage with new international partners and markets.

Fundamentally UNITE is a key programme for the Welsh Government because it strengthens Wales’ fellowship and engagement with other innovative regions across Europe.