The Will Weston interview: sustainability, innovation, place and technology

To reach net zero emissions by mid-century and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, society must adopt bold new models, mindsets and ways of working. The decisions we make today, be they economic, social or political, will shape how digital innovation serves the common good tomorrow. Time is of the essence.

With that in mind, I’ve been speaking with leading voices working at the intersection of people, place and sustainability to explore what actions can help us achieve sustainable urban futures.

Will Weston is an Accessibility and Inclusivity Consultant and the founder of All Ways Access. With over 15 years of senior management experience in the NHS, most recently as Medical Services Director at a large NHS children’s hospital, he combines deep operational knowledge of complex public systems with a powerful perspective shaped by his own lived experience as a wheelchair user. Will now advises organisations on how to create physical and digital environments that are functional and welcoming for everyone.

Read on to find out what Will thinks about why systems design is vital for innovation, how inclusive design enriches our engagement with places, and why the digital and physical worlds must align to create truly inclusive experiences.

From your perspective within the NHS, what’s one key action that hospitals could take to help towns and cities move towards a more sustainable future?

When it comes to designing, building and running hospital estates for a sustainable future, you really can’t overstate the value of a multidisciplinary, systems thinking approach. NHS Hospitals are incredibly complex environments – with clinical, operational, technological and human systems constantly interacting.

Designing and managing hospitals is not just about bricks and mortar; it’s about creating a space where patients receive the best care, staff can do their jobs effectively, and everything runs smoothly ‘behind the scenes’.

We know that hospitals don’t exist in isolation – and neither should the way we think about them. Systems thinking means looking beyond individual departments or parts of the estate, and instead considering how everything connects. That includes the flow of the building itself: how people move through it, how patients, staff and visitors navigate from outside to inside, and even how daylight reaches different spaces.

It’s also about thinking beyond the hospital estate. What’s the public transport access like? How do ambulances approach? Can families reach the site easily and find their way around without anxiety? For instance, a new hospital wing might be a marvel of modern architecture, but if the only nearby bus stop is across a busy road with no safe crossing, or the digital check-in kiosk is unusable for a blind person, the system has failed that patient before they’ve even seen a doctor. It’s about connecting the dots between the built environment, digital tools, and human experience. These aren’t just infrastructure concerns – they directly impact staff wellbeing, organisational effectiveness and patient safety. When we take a whole-system, place-based view of our estates and beyond, we’re able to design and manage hospitals that are truly attuned with the communities they support.

Having a systems-based view is new for many trusts. The familiar model is more siloed, focusing on isolated functions such as administrative productivity in one area, or clinical service delivery in another, without addressing the interdependencies that ultimately determine long-term success. This can lead to temporary fixes, inefficiencies and missed opportunities for integrated, future-proofed solutions.

A systems-thinking mindset would enable NHS hospitals to evolve in-step with the towns, cities and communities they serve, therefore supporting resilience, inclusion and environmental responsibility as part of a joined-up vision to put into practice.

That kind of systems thinking requires a huge amount of collaboration. But in a complex system like the NHS, it can be challenging for staff to move their innovative ideas forward, let alone for SMEs working outside it. Yet, innovating at speed and with care is vital. Focussing on digital healthcare, what models exist for innovation to happen?

It’s particularly difficult to innovate when there is such a significant focus within the NHS on short-term cost savings. While many forms of innovation can actually reduce costs in the long run, these savings aren’t always immediate. It requires confidence, foresight and robust data to build a strong argument and business case for investment in new ideas. 

There are various funding streams for innovation, including dedicated funding streams like Innovate UK, health innovation networks, internal Trust innovation funds, research grants, and philanthropic donations. For digital healthcare specifically, these routes are the lifeblood for bringing new technologies to life. 

An innovation like a children’s hospital AR app doesn’t just create efficiencies on paper; it can transform a frightening clinical journey into an engaging, less anxious experience for a child and their family. That improved experience has real, tangible benefits, such as increasing appointment attendance and reducing the significant costs associated with missed slots. It’s this combination of human-centred value and measurable financial return that justifies the long-term investment and makes a profound difference to people’s lives.

Photo: Ortopediatri Cocuk Ortopedi Akademisi

Often, when innovation pilots are commissioned by an NHS Trust, they happen and provide evidence of value, but they fail to roll-out and all that future opportunity is lost. How can innovation flourish in public healthcare?

One of the critical challenges in achieving truly integrated and sustainable public services is the need for collaborative thinking, not just in policy design, but in investment strategy. There has to be a collective confidence and drive to invest in the medium to long term, even when direct and up-front returns aren’t visible. Too often, the demand for instant results and demonstrable rapid ROI stifles the kinds of bold, innovative, joined-up initiatives that deliver lasting impact and will help to make our future sustainable.

This is particularly true in complex, interdependent systems such as healthcare and social care. The benefits of investment in one area may not manifest immediately within that department’s balance sheet, but rather in the outcomes of another. For example, community-based healthcare organisations could target investment towards a digital platform allowing patients with heart failure or COPD to report their blood pressure or oxygen levels. The data generated could be reviewed by a combination of clinical staff and algorithms and acted upon accordingly. Without this, a patient’s condition might slowly worsen until a crisis ensues and they suffer clinical complications. These sorts of preventative digital services may not reduce hospital admissions in the short-term, but could, over time, significantly ease the burden on both hospitals and local authority funded social care.

Again, it requires a systems-based mindset to recognise that public funding is public funding – it shouldn’t matter which department taxpayers’ money is aligned with. By breaking down the traditional silos of departmental budgeting and performance metrics, public sector organisations can start to invest more intelligently and collaboratively. Building confidence in such thinking would be a big step forwards towards delivering more innovation in public services.

Photo: Centre for Ageing Better

How has your lived experience shaped your views on what makes a space or system truly inclusive?

About 20 years ago, I was a medical student in Liverpool. Just after finals, I had a diving accident – I hit a breeze block hidden under the water and broke my neck. I’m a wheelchair user now, with limited arm function, and while I couldn’t take the clinical path I’d imagined, I still felt a strong pull to work in the NHS.

That experience drove me to complete two more degrees, which led to a 15-year career in hospital management, culminating as a Medical Services Director. Building on an incredibly rewarding and varied career, starting a family encouraged me to think about the next chapter and how I could make a different kind of impact. I recently founded All Ways Access to bridge what I see as a critical gap. Whilst I offer a broader range of specialist advisory services, it’s inclusive design which is my core passion. Ultimately, my goal is to bring a dual perspective to the table – one from health service leadership and the other from my wheelchair – to help organisations create services, spaces and experiences that work for everyone.

Inclusive design for spaces is all about making them work better for everyone, and that starts with genuinely understanding the diverse needs of the people using those places, be they hospitals, GP surgeries, parks, stadia and so on. When it comes to accessibility in spaces, yes, we have building regs, blueprints and standards that architects and designers meet on paper. But all too often, it can become a tick-box exercise, without real consideration of what a design choice might mean for a wheelchair user, a blind or deaf person, or someone who is neurodivergent. That’s where lived experience really matters. Only someone who’s navigated life with a disability can bring that kind of real-world insight to the table, and it’s when applying that unique perspective that design is truly inclusive.

“True accessibility isn’t found in a compliant blueprint; it’s built from empathy and understanding.”

The impact of design decisions, whether for physical or digital environments, can often be unintentionally exclusive, especially when they only consider a narrow range of disabilities. Segregating people by impairment type doesn’t lead to truly inclusive spaces. To get it right, we need insight from people with a wide range of lived experiences.

Since my accident, I’ve encountered numerous ways that spaces and systems have excluded me and continue to do so. Having to enter a restaurant through the kitchen when the rest of your party is using the front door, being led to a back entrance of an art gallery where the rubbish bins are stored because the design of the venue didn’t factor in wheelchair users. Or consider a museum that launches a brilliant new AR guide. If that guide directs me to an exhibit up a flight of stairs with no lift, or if the app’s interface can’t be operated without fine motor skills, the digital promise is broken by the physical reality. 

It can take days to plan a trip somewhere because the spaces and systems have been designed in ways that exclude people. These are not just personal frustrations; they represent failed customer experiences and lost opportunities for businesses. They are exactly the kinds of exclusionary outcomes that thoughtful, proactive and lived experience design can prevent.

Beyond the practical issues, we have to acknowledge the emotional toll on people who repeatedly experience structural and systemic barriers. How people feel in a space really matters. If you’re constantly made to feel like public places aren’t built with you in mind, or worse, that you’re not welcome, it carries a cost. Inclusion isn’t just about ramps or apps; it’s about belonging. We have the tools and know-how to do better, we just need the will to design the systems with everyone in mind.

Photo: Lisanto

It sounds like that deep understanding comes from a combination of your professional and personal life. How do you continue to build on that and bring it into your work with All Ways Access?

I think I first need to thank Regain Sports Charity and the support they’ve received from Calvium. Regain is a fantastic charity dedicated to supporting people who become tetraplegic through sports or leisure injuries. As a beneficiary myself, I’ve seen their impact first-hand. One of the reasons I reconnected with Regain was to meet others in the community, take part in conversations and forums, and share experiences. More recently, I completed their Learn to Earn course, and honestly, it was a real eye-opener.

I’ve carried out accessibility audits before – from art galleries to Premier League football clubs – but often through my own lens, shaped by my experience of disability. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was just how nuanced and varied those experiences can be. The Regain course helped me see disability in a much broader sense.

Over six sessions, spaced over a few months, I had the time to properly reflect. It reinforced what I’ve always believed: that lived experience really matters. You can have architects and building regs that tick all the boxes, but if you’re not listening to the people actually living with disabilities, you risk missing the point. The goal isn’t just to meet regulations, but to develop a deep empathy for people’s experience. And that empathy is exactly what leads to more inclusive, accessible, and genuinely welcoming places. That’s the shift I want to help more organisations make from the start.

By combining empathetic understanding with strategic insight, we can move beyond just opening doors. We can create spaces, both physical and digital, where everyone truly belongs. That’s the mission at the heart of my work– to build a more inclusive world, one project at a time. Ultimately, for any organisation that creates spaces or experiences, the question isn’t whether they can afford to invest in inclusive design, but whether they can afford not to.

Thank you Will for sharing your insight and experience with us!

Discover more about Calvium’s new partnership with Regain.