Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has announced its success in revalidating against the new HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7 standard, which utilises “more stringent criteria” to assess digital adoption and care quality across a variety of clinical settings.
According to the announcement published on the trust’s website, HIMSS inspectors “observed clinical staff from various hospital areas” including inpatient wards and the emergency department, as well as the trust’s Epic EPR, to learn more about the ways that digital is “embedded” within clinical and operational practice.
Dr Wai Keong Wong, director of digital at CUH, highlighted the trust’s digital progress since implementing the trust-wide Epic EPR ten years ago, noting the use of “integrated technologies and supporting IT infrastructure to transform and better support how we provide care to our patients”.
Inspectors also spoke to patients to find out ways that the trust’s digital portfolio is benefiting them, such as through its patient portal, which offers patients access to their health record, appointment details, and a means of communicating with their clinical teams.
According to Dr Sue Broster, executive director of innovation, digital and improvement at CUH, “over 240,000” patients are now using the patient portal, and the trust remains committed to “developing further digital capabilities and technological advances to put our patients in control, and enhance care and treatment even more using clinically embedded and adopted technologies”.
News on digital trusts
In a recent HTN Now panel discussion from September, we welcomed a panel of experts for a discussion around digital trusts, focusing on what good looks like from a tech perspective, the best ways of fostering a culture of innovation, building great digital teams, and more. The panel talked about celebrating success, measuring impact, what “good” looks like for digital trusts, building a “good” digital team, and more.
Also in September, a separate panel discussion looked at patient engagement, sharing learnings on adopting patient-centred processes and solutions, and highlighting outcomes and challenges around engaging patients with support from digital.
Last week, we covered the collaboration between the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Trust (RNOH) and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) on Epic’s EHR, expected to be rolled-out at RNOH in November of 2025. UCLH and RNOH’s collaboration will focus on a sharing of learning, with the new implementation being able to draw on UCLH’s “expertise in designing, implementing, and using Epic since March 2019”.
Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust also published its maternity service strategy for 2024-2029, highlighting innovation and technology as key enablers to develop the service and noting plans to launch a new maternity end-to-end electronic patient record in 2025. The strategy focuses on four key aims, including understanding clinical outcomes based on meaningful data and be responsive to this as well as reducing inequalities for those with protected characteristics, listening to and working with women from all backgrounds, and educating trust teams through active listening.
Digital transformation and digital priorities
Following the publication of the Darzi report’s findings, HTN sought comments and reactions from a range of stakeholders from across the health and technology sector. We asked for thoughts on the report’s findings and the “missed opportunities” Lord Darzi highlights from analysis of the past ten years, and look ahead to the ways technology can help secure the future of the NHS.
In a speech at the Labour Party Conference 2024, Wes Streeting called for a tech- and data-driven reform of the NHS, citing “grim” results from the Darzi report and “a decade of underinvestment”, pledging to tackle long waiting lists and create “a digital healthcare service powered by cutting-edge technology”.
