About

In this session, David McDwyer shares the early stages of building a cloud-based data platform within one of England’s largest NHS Trusts. Moving from fragmented, on-premise systems to an Azure data lake powered by Databricks, this journey highlights the realities of delivering change in a highly regulated, high-stakes environment.

Rather than focusing on a finished state, this session explores the practical challenges of designing a platform that balances governance, patient data sensitivity, and usability. From implementing medallion architecture to shaping a semantic layer that supports analytics and Power BI, the focus is on building foundations that can scale.

Attendees will gain an honest perspective on what it takes to create a data platform that works in the real world – not just in theory.

• Why building data platforms in the NHS requires navigating organisational complexity, not just technical design
• How unclear ownership across teams can create friction – particularly in areas like User Acceptance Testing – and what helps resolve it
• The reality of balancing legacy system support with building a modern cloud-based data platform
• Practical lessons from the early stages of transformation in a complex, highly regulated environment