NHS Dorset’s board assurance framework, part of the ICB’s January board meeting, has explored risks around digital maturity as part of the strategic objective to improve outcomes to population healthcare, including insufficient resources, challenges around EHR, and a lack of progress on research and innovation.
The risk, according to the papers, is that failure to develop digital maturity, infrastructure and resilience across the system as a result of “insufficient” allocation of funds and resources “could lead to an inability to fully drive change in patient pathways, integrated flexible workforce, access to services and community integration”, ultimately resulting in “unsafe services and potentially worsening health inequalities in Dorset”.
The board lists current controls in terms of processes, plans, and procedures in place to mitigate risk, noting the data security protection toolkit, ICB internal and external audits, NHSE’s digital maturity assessment, and system data intelligence dashboards. The framework also highlights gaps in controls, and outlines mitigating actions such as reviewing shared ownership, informing the financial strategy for “expected cost pressures of improving digital maturity”, and digital clinical risk management governance to enable “shared risk for centrally procured digital platforms for best value purposes”.
It considers areas of progress around digital maturity in improving outcomes to population healthcare, noting particularly the appointment of a new CDIO and the completion of the ICB’s medium term financial plan, which it states will consider deliverables and “associated options and costs”.
The ICB is also looking at increasing “sustainable finance” for “the increasing costs both revenue and capital in DTI”, and utilising training to increase competency and awareness around digital risk management to promote a shared governance risk model. Of note, under “associated corporate risks”, the framework states that failure to implement an EHR successfully across NHS Dorset and its acute trusts means the ICB could “face a range of challenges that could jeopardise the entire initiative”.
Updates on digital maturity and future directions from across the health sector
NHS England published its 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance last month, with a focus on local prioritisation and planning, reducing wait times, improving access and patient flow, and more. Introducing the objectives and priorities, NHSE encourages systems to “shift their focus” from inputs to outcomes for patients and local communities, and notes the need for “a relentless focus” on operational performance, productivity improvements, and reductions in variation, delays, and waste. From 2025/26, the NHS will move to a “more devolved system”, according the guidance, whereby ICSs and trusts can earn greater flexibility and freedom, and patients have more choice and control.
SW London ICS’s digital strategy to 2028 set out a digital vision prioritising citizen and health professional empowerment, joined up patient pathways, and the “seamless” provision of health and care services for all citizens, “supported by new technologies”. On key enablers, the strategy recognises the importance of leadership, governance, and people, committing to ensuring that SWL is “well led” by “building and nurturing digital and data leadership”, investing in digital leadership skills, and ensuring clinical involvement in design and decision making. ICS boards will also be “well equipped to lead digital transformation and collaboration”, and organisations will have “well-resourced teams” with the skills required to deliver modern data and digital services, with data and digital literacy “ubiquitous” across ICS staff.
Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire’s digital strategy to 2028 sets out a series of digital design principles to guide a system-wide approach, highlighting priorities including efficiencies of scale, information sharing, and simplification of the digital estate.
