Associate feature: Revolutionising patient care in NHS Scotland with on-prem AI and cyber resilience

The healthcare landscape is rapidly evolving, with technology playing an increasingly critical role in improving patient care. NHS Scotland faces the challenge of managing vast amounts of sensitive patient data while striving to leverage cutting-edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance services and outcomes. The breadth of technology needed in an AI world is more than just the tools themselves, you need visibility, transparency, control and co-ordination to ensure that AI is used responsibly at scale. This article explores one approach, which is a secure on-premises AI approach to unlock new possibilities for patient care in NHS Scotland.

The challenge of patient data in NHS Scotland

NHS Scotland must adhere to stringent regulations like the Scottish Government Records Management: Health & Social Care Code of Practice (Scotland) 2020 and the NHS Scotland Information Security Policy to manage sensitive patient data securely. These regulations mandate strict confidentiality protocols, staff training in data protection, and compliance with security standards. Additionally, the Data Protection Act 2018 grants patients’ rights regarding their personal information, including access, rectification, and objection to processing.

Traditional data management approaches are time-consuming and resource-intensive, making innovation and improvement in patient care challenging. The increasing volume and complexity of patient data further complicate these efforts.

Now, let's explore how we can address these pain points using advanced technological solutions.

Synergy of watsonx, Fusion HCI, and Predatar

The combination of watsonx, Fusion HCI, and Predatar creates a powerful synergy that addresses the unique challenges of deploying AI in healthcare. watsonx provides AI capabilities, Fusion HCI provides robust and secure on-premises infrastructure, and Predatar ensures cyber resilience and data protection. This integrated approach enables IT and Digital Transformation teams to confidently leverage AI for patient care while maintaining the highest standards of data security and privacy.

AI Centre of Excellence | Trustmarque + IBM

Trustmarque’s AI Centre of Excellence is a comprehensive program designed to guide organisations through the intricacies of AI implementation, ensuring responsible and ethical adoption of AI technologies. At the core of the CoE is a structured engagement that includes AI envisioning workshops, technology and data sessions, AI ethics and governance discussions, and security protocols. This methodical approach helps organisations define their AI vision, mission, and objectives while addressing key aspects like data readiness, AI model lifecycle management, and regulatory compliance. Trustmarque partners closely with IBM, leveraging their advanced AI platforms like watsonx to deliver cutting-edge solutions. This collaboration emphasises the importance of explainable and transparent AI, fostering trust and accountability. By combining IBM’s technological prowess with Trustmarque’s strategic framework, the AI CoE aims to align AI initiatives with business goals, mitigate implementation risks,  and ensure adherence to the highest standards of governance and ethical practices.

Real-world examples of watsonx in Healthcare

IBM watsonx has been successfully implemented in various healthcare settings, demonstrating its potential to improve patient care and operational efficiency. For example, the NHS has leveraged watsonx's GenAI capabilities to automate SMS reminders, which reduced missed appointments by 6%, freeing up valuable clinic time. In another case, AI analytics enabled operational efficiencies and led to the care of over 700 extra patients weekly without additional staff, easing the care backlog.

IBM watsonx: AI-powered solutions for Healthcare

IBM watsonx is an advanced AI and data platform designed to help organisations unlock the full potential of their data. It offers a suite of tools and capabilities, including:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP): watsonx can understand and process human language, enabling more natural interactions with technology and facilitating tasks like summarising patient history and extracting key information from medical records.
• Data-driven insights: watsonx can analyse vast amounts of patient data to identify trends, and predict treatment outcomes amongst other benefits.
• Predictive Analytics: By analysing historical data, watsonx can anticipate future trends and patient behaviours, helping healthcare providers make proactive decisions and improve resource allocation.
• AI-powered chatbots: watsonx can power chatbots and virtual assistants to handle patient inquiries, provide personalised recommendations, and efficiently resolve issues, improving patient engagement and satisfaction. This can be particularly beneficial in a healthcare setting, where patients often have questions about appointments, test results, or medication. By automating these routine inquiries, AI-powered chatbots can free up healthcare professionals to focus on more complex tasks and provide more personalised care to patients.

IBM is committed to developing and using AI responsibly, which is crucial in the healthcare field. Their focus on explainable AI (XAI) can help build trust with users and regulators. This commitment to responsible AI is essential for ensuring that AI systems are used ethically and transparently, particularly when dealing with sensitive patient data.

Why on-premises AI?

While cloud-based AI solutions offer scalability and flexibility, on-premises deployment provides several advantages for organisations like NHS Scotland that handle sensitive data:

• Enhanced data security and privacy: On-premises deployment allows for greater control over data security and privacy, ensuring compliance with strict regulations and minimising the risk of data breaches.
• Reduced latency: On-premises AI can reduce latency, enabling faster processing and analysis of data, which is crucial for time-sensitive healthcare applications.
• Improved data governance: On-premises deployment allows for better data governance, ensuring that data is managed and used in accordance with organisational policies and regulatory requirements.

Fusion HCI stack: the foundation for on-premises AI

The Fusion HCI stack provides a robust and secure foundation for running watsonx on-premises. This hyper-converge infrastructure solution offers several benefits:

Deployment and scalability

• Rapid deployment: Fusion HCI enables quick deployment of watsonx in your data centre, with a Proof of Concept (POC) environment set up in less than a week. Full-scale production deployments may take longer depending on the complexity and scale of the implementation.
• Flexible resource allocation: Fusion HCI allows you to host multiple clusters in a single appliance, provisioning clusters on demand and enabling flexible resource allocation for different AI workloads.

Resiliency and data protection

• Enterprise-grade resiliency: Fusion HCI is built with resiliency in mind, featuring redundant networking and container-native storage that protects against node or drive failures.
• Data redundancy: The underlying storage platform, IBM Storage Scale, uses erasure coding to protect against data loss. It offers different erasure coding variants, such as 4+2p and 8+3p, with varying levels of fault tolerance and data efficiency. The 4+2p variant requires 6 servers and can withstand 2 simultaneous failures, while the 8+3p variant requires 11 servers and can withstand 3 simultaneous failures.
• Integrated backup: Fusion HCI provides integrated backup capabilities through IBM Storage Protect Plus, ensuring that your watsonx deployment and data are protected against data loss or site outages.

Performance and optimisation

• High performance: Fusion HCI delivers high-performance computing, GPUs, storage, and network capabilities, ensuring optimal performance for demanding AI workloads.
• Accelerated queries: Fusion HCI accelerates watsonx.data queries by providing a high-speed distributed cache, improving the efficiency of data analysis.
• Global namespace: IBM Storage Scale provides a global namespace for access to large numbers of files, simplifying data access and management.

Predatar: ensuring cyber resilience for critical data

Predatar is a SaaS cyber resilience tool that complements watsonx by providing advanced recovery assurance. Its key features include:

• Automated recovery testing: Predatar continually tests the recoverability of your data, ensuring that backups are reliable and can be restored in case of an attack.
• Intelligent threat detection: Predatar uses AI-powered threat detection to identify and isolate malware that other security tools might miss.
• Built-in XDR: Predatar includes built-in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) tools to eliminate threats in a secure Cleanroom environment.
• AI-Powered reporting: Predatar's Aurora AI monitors your resilience status 24/7 and provides actionable insights to improve your security posture.
• Data protection: Predatar can protect various types of data, including container and VM data stores, databases, and applications, ensuring comprehensive coverage for your critical data.

AI use cases for enhanced patient care

By deploying watsonx on-premises with Fusion HCI and Predatar, NHS Scotland can leverage AI to improve patient care while ensuring data security and privacy. Here are some specific use cases:

• Automated categorisation of patient records: Watsonx can automatically categorise patient records based on various criteria, such as diagnosis, treatment plan, or demographics, improving efficiency and enabling better organization of information.
• Redaction of PII: Watsonx can automatically identify and redact Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from medical records, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and protecting patient confidentiality. This is crucial for enabling secure data sharing and collaboration while protecting patient privacy.
• Summarisation of patient history: Watsonx can generate concise summaries of patient history from various sources, including medical records and clinical notes, providing healthcare professionals with a quick overview of relevant information. This can save valuable time and improve the efficiency of patient care.

Conclusion: A Secure and Powerful Solution for NHS Scotland

Deploying IBM watsonx on-premises with Fusion HCI and Predatar offers a secure and powerful solution to leverage AI for enhanced patient care. This approach addresses the challenges of data security and privacy while enabling innovative applications of AI to improve efficiency, personalise care, and ultimately, deliver better outcomes for patients. By adopting this solution, NHS Scotland can:

• Enhance patient care: Improve diagnostics, personalise treatment plans, and provide more efficient care.
• Increase efficiency: Automate tasks, optimise resource allocation, and streamline workflows.
• Ensure data security: Maintain control over sensitive patient data and comply with strict regulations.
• Improve cyber resilience: Protect against cyberattacks and ensure data recoverability.

These solutions combined are our suggested approach to unlock the full potential of AI and can transform the NHS Scotland patient care maximising the benefits for both patients and healthcare professionals.

This article is sponsored by Trustmarque

trustmarque.com

Trustmarque delivers the value of technology to bring real-life impact. As a trusted partner to both customers and technology vendors, together, we turn your vision into reality. Trustmarque’s knowledge, experience, and technical expertise help organisations acquire and adopt the right technology to create an environment of innovation. Trustmarque was awarded CRN Public Sector Partner of the Year in 2024.

Works cited

1. Retention and protection of information - Healthcare Improvement Scotland, 2025, https://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.scot/privacy-policy-how-we-use-your-information/retention-and-protection-of-information/
2. Data protection | National Services Scotland, 2025, https://www.nss.nhs.scot/how-nss-works/data-protection/
3. Data Protection Notice – Your Rights & Privacy - NHS Lothian, 2025, https://www.nhslothian.scot/yourrights/data-protection-privacy/data-protection-notice/
4. Chatbot for Healthcare - IBM watsonx Assistant, 2025, https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-assistant/healthcare
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6. IBM watsonx, 2025, https://ibm.github.io/storage-fusion/watsonx/overview/
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9. Predatar Cyber Recovery Orchestration - Veeam, 2025, https://www.veeam.com/sys1080