Day one began with a warm welcome from our General Manager Tim Elliott, setting the tone for two days of collaboration and innovation. Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s, Chief Executive, Dr Birju Bartoli, then shared an inspiring message around NEP’s role in supporting NHS organisations through change, emphasising the importance of working together as a consortium.

The morning continued with a thought-provoking keynote from Distie Profit, UK General Manager at Oracle Health, who explored how Oracle innovation is helping healthcare organisations prepare for the future. This was followed by one of the conference highlights, a captivating session from Jenny Radcliffe, “The People Hacker”, who used real stories and humour to show how human behaviour and trust can be both our greatest strength and our biggest security risk.

Across the agenda, there was a strong focus on innovation and best practice. Our Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) update showed how smarter planning, budgeting, and forecasting are helping NHS organisations improve efficiency and insight. Meanwhile, NEP Reach Reporting gave members clear updates on how real-time financial insights are transforming oversight and budget management across the consortium. Additionally, Oracle’s session on AI for fusion Applications gave our delegates an in-depth look at how predictive and generative AI is being embedded directly into Oracle Fusion Cloud’s everyday systems to support NHS finance and procurement teams to make faster, more confident decisions.