We heard from Black Country ICB, who shared with us the system’s main digital priorities, including an “ambitious vision” for a refreshed digital strategy for 2025-2028. This is “still rooted in the principles and clinical and digital professional vision of the 2023-2026 strategy but is reflective of the pace of change of available technology, the successful delivery of our current milestone plan, and to reflect recent national guidance and the NHS recognition of the pressing need to progress from analogue to digital at pace.” The ICB will also be looking to facilitate the system’s shift to community-based care and preventive measures.

Looking ahead, as part of the ICS Digital Strategy, the Black Country is working with four acute providers (The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust and The Dudley Group Foundation NHS Trust) and its lead mental health provider (Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust) to explore a system wide IT provision – a Black Country Combined IT Service. “Our vision is to deliver a connected health and care environment where technology empowers both health and care providers and patients,” it states. “Through collaborative working we will create a unified IT service that enhances operational efficiency and effectiveness.”

Dr Penny Kechagioglou, CCIO and deputy CMO at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW), shared some insights with us around the trust’s main digital projects and priorities, including that eight months post EPR go-live UHCW has “moved from stabilisation to the optimisation and benefit realisation phase”, and that work has begun to automate “two key clinical pathways”: fracture neck of femur and induction of labour.

“We have also gone live with our patient portal with very good uptake from patients, who are able to see clinic letters, appointments and blood results,” Penny reported, with the next phase of the project set to enable patients to manage their bookings and also interact with their clinical teams remotely. Elsewhere, the use of AI to optimise pathways and improve productivity is a priority for UHCW, and the trust is “focusing such work on our urgent and emergency care workflows as well as cancer pathways”, according to Penny, who also highlighted “good progress” around the Federated Data Platform, “which will be a game changer in the way we learn from NHS data”.

On examples of digital projects currently underway or recently completed at UHCW, we learned from Penny that a collaboration with IBM and Celonis saw the use of AI to analyse processes, with findings that “messaging patients 14 days before an appointment and doing a follow-up four days before was most effective, as it meant they could cancel earlier and re-book the appointment in plenty of time”. This saw a reduction in DNAs in this subset of patients from 10 percent to 4 percent.

Penny also noted a couple of other digital projects to have made an impact at UHCW. A proof-of-concept pilot using a generative AI tool to validate 1000 patient letters waiting for treatment at UHCW showed that rather than manual validation, “which would take over 1,000 hours”, the tool could validate the entire waiting list, signpost the patients that needed validation and reduce that time down to 100 hours. “We are now applying this tool to the entire waiting list where it is modelled that UHCW could remove 6,000 – 10,000 patients from the waiting list who don’t need to be there”, she said. The trust’s People Assist AI-powered virtual assistant allowing colleagues to access answers to basic queries about a range topics including recruitment, pensions and health and wellbeing services, has also been used by “over 1,430 UHCW staff” since its launch in April 2024.

Looking to the future, Penny highlighted a “successful innovation acceleration programme” in partnership with the University of Warwick, “with brilliant innovators collaborating to deliver an innovative digital consent and patient communication tool”. She shared that the tool had demonstrated that “it can optimise shared-decision making and reduce health inequalities in access to care and communication about care”. This kind of collaboration is the future for digital health, she went on, also noting the FDP as an exciting prospect for the future which “will support sound clinical and operational decision-making across the system”.

Andy Carruthers, Group Chief Technology Innovation Officer at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, told us about the Group’s focus on improving digital maturity and the experience of colleagues and patients. “Part of this is bringing teams together and building a culture that fosters the use of digital at its heart,” he said. “We want to create an environment where people can do their jobs more easily through, for example, single tap technology to sign in, enhancements in our electronic patient record functionality, standardising systems and transitioning to unified NHS.net email across our group.”

Andy also shared some details of current projects, including the delivery of the Group’s new eConsent module, which, he says, “means we can gain consent from patients remotely or on the go”. This reduces reliance on paper-based methods and stores the information within the EPR, he continued, “which clinicians prefer, because it saves them time and is more intuitive, and which patients love because they can consider their options in the comfort of their own home and refer back to the information.”

This year has also seen the opening of the East Midlands Planned Care Centre at the Leicester General Hospital site, Andy told us. “As part of designing the new building we embedded a new digital target operating model which includes a number of new capabilities that positively impact on patient access and engagement,” he said. “For example, we know that navigating our sites can be challenging if you’re not already familiar with the layout and if you have access needs. Our new app allows people to get their bearings ahead of time, and you can also use our digital kiosks for directions when you arrive. Patient feedback has been hugely positive. Staff say it is a great signposting tool, and we are seeing fewer people getting lost or arriving late for their care.”

Looking to the future, “the whole team at UHL and UHN is embracing digital,” Andy said. “The future is exciting. It reflects our digital maturity and the journey we are on, and none more so than in the AI space, supported by our new AI Governance Structure. As founder members of European TRAIN we are collaborating with partners across Europe to introduce AI safely and responsibly. Our ambition is for a regional approach across the acute providers in the East Midlands. The digital leadership teams from the East Midlands Acute Providers (EMAP) Network meet weekly and face to face monthly to discuss opportunities to collaborate and realise benefits at scale. We have saved money on procurements and have plans to standardise tooling and clinical documentation as part of our EPR implementations, as well as investigating other opportunities to work together.”

Elsewhere, we heard from Alexis Farrow, digital programme director, and Jane Scarborough, programme and business change lead at Digital Notts, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICS, who told us about five strategic priorities in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire including public facing digital services, frontline digitisation, interoperability, and supporting intelligent decision making; underpinned by three enabling priorities: infrastructure, sustainability and workforce. “Like many ICSs across the region, Digital Notts is working to ensure our digital priorities are aligned to Nottingham & Nottinghamshire ICB’s evolving system-wide transformation plans,” the team shared. “In particular, we’re focusing on how digital is a key enabler, changing the way we work, improving patient engagement and delivering much needed savings and efficiencies for the benefit of our citizens and our workforce. Our strategy has been developed with ‘our people’ at the heart of it and as such a significant amount of stakeholder and public engagement has helped to shape our priorities.”

Current digital projects in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire include work on The Notts Care Record, which will support information sharing across the system, but with a particular focus on system priority areas such as urgent and emergency care, frailty, and community transformation. 

The ICS also highlighted work to ensure support for the region’s “most digitally excluded citizens”, with the team supporting “over 10,000 citizens last year to use digital tools and improve their digital confidence to help manage their own health and wellbeing through direct outreach and working with our local community groups”.

Other notable digital work reported by Digital Notts includes patient engagement portals embedded within the NHS App. 

On future plans and exciting opportunities for collaboration, Digital Notts shared the use of digital tech for elderly residents, focusing on reducing the need for residential care or an extended stay in a Pathway 2 hospital bed; and the use of digital care planning and remote monitoring to support patients’ self-management of long-term conditions, which is an approach being developed across Nottinghamshire.

The team told us about “strong” existing collaborative relationships across partner organisations within Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, and a system wide digital collaborative arrangement that has seen “huge benefits” from working together on joint procurements and deployments. “This is being further strengthened through a joint strategic digital collaborative arrangement across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and Derby and Derbyshire, with Andrew Fearn now providing the role of Joint Chief Digital Information Officer across both systems,” they stated. “It’s early days, but we’re already seeing the benefits in sharing knowledge, expertise and maximising greater regional efficiencies and improvements, there really is an opportunity to learn and collaborate at scale within the East Midlands. There are many digital opportunities – our challenge is to prioritise and work with the system transformation programmes to ensure we maximise the benefits and identify the savings for future investment.”

We also caught up with the team from Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust, who shared with us some progress on the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) Care Record, which has reportedly “gone further and faster than many contemporaries, incorporating information such as virtual wards and community equipment into the programme, and forging extended alliances across the care sector including a major local hospice”. In support, a tailored communications programme has been targeted at diverse audiences across the region’s population.

Noting the previous challenges of separate records and organisational IT systems which were “not connected”, meaning “care was disjointed and it often left the individual having to repeat themselves to several different care professionals”; Leicestershire Partnership said: “Now known as Connecting Care, we teamed up with an established offer from Yorkshire and Humber Care Record. In this way, LLR has been able to learn from the experience of a health and care system and use and adapt an IT solution that has already been developed. We have taken the basic product and added to it in new and innovative ways, forging links across health and care that were previously unthinkable.”

Of particular note, the LLRCR has integrated information for patients on virtual wards, allowing health and care professionals to receive real-time updates on the health and care of the individual. NHS England are reportedly monitoring the team’s progress on this initiative, “keen to learn from our experience and share the learning nationally”. Another innovative development has seen the joining up of records from across the NHS and social care into a major local hospice provider. “The addition of LOROS Hospice means that the organisation will be better informed about an individual’s care and treatment history and will be able to provide even better, person-centred care,” the team shared.