North Central London ICB’s Digital Diagnostics Strategy for 2025 – 2030 outlines plans to upgrade infrastructure, digitise workflows, equip staff with “intuitive tools”, and leverage AI and advanced analytics.
The ICB presents a roadmap for delivering digital diagnostics, with focuses for year one including single order comms for pathology and radiology, extended community order comms for pathology, the NMR Digital Registry, connecting private providers into data flows, and providing an image sharing repository. This will be built on in years two and three with the digitising of workflows and reporting, read access to NCL’s PACS hospital record, early AI use for smart pathways, and the contractual obligation for private providers/suppliers to integrate data.
In the final two years of the strategy, NCL will then reportedly focus on asset management systems, developing batch ordering capability, an integrated booking system, horizon scanning for digital innovation, working on integrations of AI, and the proactive monitoring of patients.
The strategy sets out some of the challenges facing NCL in this space. Whilst the appetite for collaboration is there, it notes, “there continue to be numerous barriers to delivering digital transformation at scale”. Variances in digital maturity across the system also mean there is “vital” work to be done on baseline infrastructure prior to developing digital diagnostics capabilities, the strategy continues.
There are also things to consider around interoperability and the “alignment of architectural strategic direction”, according to the strategy, “along with tools and products that facilitate the matching and flow of data”. There are ongoing challenges with digital capacity as a result of the shortage of digital, data and technology expertise, it adds, as well as with financial planning and governance, where there is “still much to do in terms of ensuring digital assurance and decision making is embedded in all transformation work”.
Critical success factors, the strategy highlights, will be around sustainable financial investment, digital culture, digital workforce, and digital access for citizens. The ICB also sets out a series of goals to level up digital maturity and improve access to healthcare information, to work on a design thinking approach to new technology, and to delivering smarter system workflows.
“Diagnostics are the backbone of healthcare, informing over 85% of clinical pathways,” NCL states. “Yet, challenges such as outdated processes, varied digital maturity, and fragmented systems limit our potential. With diagnostic tests forming a critical part of care for 1.7 million NCL residents, modernisation is not just an option—it’s a necessity.”
Digital in diagnostics: wider trend
NHS Scotland’s operational improvement plan notes the national roll-out of a digital dermatology pathway to GPs across Scotland, and to all health boards “by the end of spring 2025”, following the procurement of a digital service enabling GPs to take photos of skin issues and upload them to a dermatology referral. Already available in six health boards and over 400 GP practices, the plan cites evidence suggesting that this pathway will allow “around 50 percent” of patients to be returned to their GP “without having an in-person appointment with a consultant”.
A research programme in Cambridge, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is supporting Lyzeum Ltd, a spinout from the University of Cambridge, to commercialise its AI tool that aims to accelerate coeliac diagnosis. The study involved submitting 4,000 sets of biopsy images from five NHS hospitals to the algorithm “to help it distinguish between healthy samples and those with coeliac disease”.
Finalists have been selected for HTN’s AI and Data Awards, with a category focusing on the best use of AI for diagnosis, treatment and patient care attracting entries from a range of solutions implementing AI in diagnostics.
