As NHS leaders focus on the government's three big shifts (hospital to community, treatment to prevention, analogue to digital) a quieter risk is building in the background. Quantum computing promises real advances for patient care, but it also threatens the encryption that currently keeps patient data safe. And this risk applies whether or not your organisation ever touches quantum technology directly.
Bad actors are already harvesting encrypted NHS data today, ready to unlock it the moment quantum computing catches up. The UK government has committed £670 million to quantum computing, accelerating timelines that NHS leaders can no longer treat as a distant problem. This isn't tomorrow's issue. It's today's imperative.