CDAON Annual Conference 2026: The Power of Position – Data and Analytics at the Centre of Health Leadership

There’s something you notice immediately when you walk into a venue that wasn’t designed for PowerPoint, the energy is different, the conversations start before the sessions do, and when people finally sit down, they’re already learning and sharing.

That was the feeling at the CDAON Annual Conference in March 2026, held at Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds.

No endless back-to-back presentations, no racing through slides with barely a minute for questions, instead, four deep-dive panel conversations with some of the sharpest data and analytics leaders in the NHS, given proper time and space to get into the detail.

The evening before had already told us something important: 40 people showed up for what was supposed to be a quiet pre-conference drink. By the end of the night, the conversations were still going. That’s the kind of community this network has become.

Marc Farr, Chair of the CDAON, opened the day with welcome remarks that cut straight to the point, this is our second sold-out conference in two years, we have a voice now, the question is what we do with it.

It’s worth saying: this was a genuinely difficult moment to gather. Some colleagues in the room were mid-consultation about their own roles, the national head of profession post was vacant, the restructuring of NHSE, ICBs and CSUs was creating real uncertainty across the community. Marc acknowledged all of that directly, and it made what followed feel more grounded, more urgent, and more honest.

Session 1: A shift left sounds great, but there’s no data over there

Chair: Ruth Holland with Sam Williamson, Richard Wilson, Emma Wright, Jane Johnston and Laura Bell
Sponsor: Alteryx

The NHS ten-year plan makes a compelling case for shifting care: less reliance on acute settings, more investment in prevention, population health management at ICB level. In theory, it’s exactly what data and analytics leaders have been asking for. In practice, the panel was candid: the data to deliver it simply isn’t ready in many areas and the NHS funding flows inhibit it.

Moving into community, primary care, and prevention means working with data that lacks the definitions and rigour that acute settings have spent years developing. Virtual wards, social care, community data, all rich with potential, all currently difficult to use with confidence.

The NHS is full of organisations independently trying to solve the same data problems and paying separately for identical pieces of work. Sharing approaches and building on each other’s analysis about solving the problems rather than where the issues manifest in the system, this is what a genuine professional network like CDAON makes possible.

The clear ask to national bodies: listen and engage. Set the standards, provide the frameworks, publish the guidance, streamline and automate mandatory reporting to free up our local data and analytics talent and then let local systems get on with it. The overdue workforce plan was seen as a critical opportunity to finally give proper recognition to the data and analytics profession, placing it alongside finance and HR colleagues who have long had professional registration, resulting credibility that data leaders are still working towards.

Session 2: Is there anyone left that understands how this machine works?

Chair: James Freed with: Janine Dellar, Catherine Dampney, Will Monaghan and Helen Seth
Sponsor: Multiverse

If session 1 was about the left shift, session 2 was about what’s happening to the people meant to deliver it. The changes to NHSE, the abolition of CSUs, and the ongoing uncertainty around ICBs have created a brain drain that people in the room were experiencing in real time. One speaker described it as watching an organisation with extraordinary depth of skills and domain knowledge be told it’s no longer required. That’s not a structural challenge; that’s a personal drain.

Secure Data Environment for research was referenced: the SDE programme sits outside the scope of current cuts, backed by serious government investment through HDR UK, and represents one of the most genuinely exciting spaces in NHS data right now with the introduction of the HDRS (National Health Data Research Service). Not every door is closing.

The stronger argument isn’t to hold on to what the profession has always done, but to champion a different version of it, one that frees up capacity from the production line and redirects it towards the insight and strategic work that actually improves patient outcomes. The audience was receptive, if not entirely convinced the conditions currently exist to make that shift.

Session 3: Can AI really transform the way we think about health?

Chair: Roger Taylor with Sarah Culkin, Chris Mainey, Benedikt von Thungen, Maxine Mackintosh and David Howell
Sponsor: Sanome

The AI session was refreshingly grounded. No hype, no breathless predictions. Discussions referred to concrete examples: algorithms replacing manual moderation of patient feedback at scale, machine learning improving vaccine distribution forecasting, and optimising vaccination invitations in a way that’s already saved £2 million before you even start counting the health outcomes. These are good questions that AI answered well, specific, bounded, answerable.

Panel drew a useful distinction between AI in operational and administrative settings, where the case is already strong, and AI supporting clinical decision-making, which must be treated as a medical device and go through proper regulatory scrutiny.

AI is outrageously overfunded relative to the data infrastructure it needs to run on. If even a fraction of the investment flowing into model development were redirected to data standards, data quality and analytical skills, the outcomes would be dramatically better.

Session 4: At which point will we believe the analyst rather than the consultant?

Chair: Joe Talora with: Roland Agidee, Ranjita Sen, Rachel McElroy, Simon Wellesley-Miller and Lisa Fox
Sponsor: Hunter

For too long, the default position of the data and analytical professionals has been the metaphorical cupboard: producing the weekly report, feeding the dashboard, answering the ad hoc query. Highly skilled people doing work that often doesn’t reflect their capability and rarely gives them the influence their insights could carry.

It’s not that organisations lack capable data and analytics experts. It’s that they lack trust in the evidence those they produce. And when that trust is absent, organisations rent it from consultants instead, the remedy isn’t defensiveness, it’s building the architecture of analytics trust from the inside out.

There’s a world of difference between seeing a performance bottleneck on a spreadsheet and actually shadowing in a contact centre or doing a ride-out in an ambulance. That proximity changes the questions an analyst asks, and it changes how credibly they can challenge what they’re being asked to produce.

The session concluded with four clear focus: showcase your successes more confidently; get analytical teams onto the shop floor to build operational context; get in early when external consultants are being commissioned; and establish genuine data stewardship across organisations. The CDAON Manifesto, professional registration, independence of thought, a proper seat at the table, ran as a golden thread through all of it.

Professionalising the data and analytics workforce isn’t abstract aspiration. It’s the mechanism through which data and analytics workforce gain the credibility that currently gets rented from outside, and external consultants doesn’t always deliver value for money or better outcome.

Launching the Data Observatory CIC: connecting data for social good

The conference also marked the launch of something genuinely new, Rony Arafin and Kate Cheema introduced the Data Observatory CIC, health and social care data think tank, established as a Community Interest Company, backed by AphA and CDAON.

It’s not yet another organisation, it is designed to service what’s missing.

The premise is straightforward but important. Health and social care sits at a tipping point: digital transformation, AI, and widening inequalities are all demanding faster, more ethical responses. Yet progress keeps stalling because of fragmentation, uneven adoption, and a tendency towards closed commercial approaches that don’t scale. The Data Observatory exists to change that.

It’s designed as a national platform where leaders, innovators and researchers can turn data into real-world, properly evaluated solutions, through thought leadership, consultancy, fellowships and grants. Crucially, it’s complementary not competitive: it maps and amplifies what’s already working, partnering with DHSC, health and care organisations, professional networks and industry rather than duplicating them.

So where does that leave us?

The day didn’t resolve anything, it wasn’t meant to.

However, it gave the leadership community going through real uncertainty, the much-needed space to think out loud together, to be honest about what isn’t working, and to remind each other why our work matters.

Thank you to the CDAON sponsors and to every member who made the journey to Leeds.