Digital and data across ICS regions: North East and Yorkshire

In this final edition of our feature series exploring the digital and data landscape of each ICS region in England, we’re turning our attention to the North East and Yorkshire.

This region is home to four integrated care systems: Humber and North Yorkshire, North East and North Cumbria, South Yorkshire, and West Yorkshire. We’ll be delving into digital strategies, hearing insights, exploring the latest on digital transformation from the region, and more. We’ll also hear from Rackspace Technology on their work to support health and care transformation in the North East and Yorkshire region and beyond.

Insights from the region

We heard from Dawn Greaves, associate director of digital transformation at Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust, who shared with us some of the trust’s main digital priorities, including increasing digital maturity and “getting the basics right”, with an ongoing replacement programme underway to ensure staff have well-maintained and up-to-date devices to enable them to do their roles efficiently. The trust is currently working to share key clinical data through the regional shared care record, which is the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record, she added.

Enabling patients to connect with the trust digitally is also an area of focus, with the implementation of a digital letters solution and a patient information hub, Dawn shares will be “the single front door for patients to access all service information, patient information leaflets and self-management pathways in accessible formats, including language translation”. Leeds Community is also working with 100 percent Digital, a team based in Leeds City Council, who work with third-sector organisations to establish community hubs where people can go and get support to access services online.

“As part of our Home First approach across Leeds City, we are developing a single care record that community and social care staff will jointly use to triage patients who are in hospital, to enable early discharge and development of their care plans,” Dawn told us. “So regardless of which organisation is delivering care, we all have visibility.” This will be “transformational” for the teams who deliver home care across Leeds and will enable the hospital to free up bed capacity to improve patient flow, she continued.

Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust shared with us that it is “currently making huge strides forward in plans to prioritise digital across the trust, to improve efficiencies and patient care”, highlighting its BeDigital programme that incorporates a wide range of digital, IT and Business Intelligence workstreams. “The BeDigital programme enables us to be at the forefront of delivering digitally enabled care that enhances patient journeys and improves outcomes, as well as overall patient and staff satisfaction,” the update states. “It encourages staff across the trust to discover new ideas and create better solutions using modern technologies, again highlighting our dedication to leading the way in digital healthcare.”

The trust also hosts Interweave, the brand name of the shared care record solution in use across six ICSs, looking to provide partners with “a safe, accessible and easy to use approach to shared care records, including our own Yorkshire and Humber Care Record (YHCR), in line with national standards and the NHS Connecting Care Records programme”. At present, there is a focus on user-centred design to adapt to the needs of clinicians and users, the trust told us, whilst the use of AI is also being explored to further support user experience. “This work has driven us to develop new booking and referral applications, streamlining the process to ensure patients are quickly directed to the right care where their needs can be best met,” Humber Teaching stated. “Additionally, work has been developed on providing Wayfinder services that enable people and carers to access information about their secondary care referrals and elective care.”

Other recent successes highlighted by the trust include the introduction of maternity notes into the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record with BadgerNet and the successful application of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the global standard for exchanging healthcare data, with Interweave. “Our BeDigital workstreams proactively support the Trust with its digital transformation, working towards the national goal of moving from analogue to digital, and ensuring clinically safe and efficient working practices for our staff, patients, service users and stakeholders,” it noted.

We reached out to Shaukat Ali Khan, executive chief digital and information officer at West Yorkshire ICB, who responded with an update on digital and data in West Yorkshire. Shaukat highlighted that since his appointment in September 2024 and the establishment of a Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) directorate, “it was agreed that a review should be undertaken to understand the future strategic direction of DDaT for the ICB on behalf of the ICS and our operating model to discharge this vision”.

In response to this request, West Yorkshire is developing a Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Strategy to underpin the delivery of its Integrated Care Strategy. According to Shaukat, a discovery stage for the DDaT Strategy was commissioned and initiated to take place between January and March 2025. This discovery phase will look to explore the current landscape, identify key challenges and opportunities, and lay the groundwork for a full strategy to be launched in September 2025.

The team conducted over 100 1:1 and small-group interviews, workshops and surveys with over 15 partner organisations across the region and undertook wider engagement with the public, ICB leaders, local authorities, NHS providers, VCSE organisations, Healthwatch, academic institutions, industry and digital innovation bodies. Key themes emerging so far, as shared by the ICB, include:

  • User-friendly tech first – instead of focusing solely on digital literacy, start by making technology easier to use.
  • Workforce challenges – recruiting and keeping digital, data, and technology (DDaT) specialists is tough due to uncompetitive NHS salaries compared to the private sector.
  • Bridging the digital gap – many non-digital staff need support to improve their digital skills.
  • Cyber security awareness – raising knowledge across the workforce.
  • AI and automation – understanding its role in improving services.
  • Better data for better care – ensuring frontline staff have access to high-quality data to support decision-making and service design.
  • Future-proofing the workforce – today’s staff won’t be tomorrow’s workforce. How can we work with universities to embed digital literacy into core training?

 

Following discovery, the DDaT strategy is reportedly moving into the development phase, “working in parallel to the 2025 WGLL DMA and the 10 year plan to ensure the West Yorkshire DDaT strategy build upon the current state of digital maturity to deliver the aim of the 10 year plan”.

Examples of digital projects currently underway in West Yorkshire include a collaboration with Yorkshire and Humber Kidney Network and Healthy.io, making 30,000 urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (uACR) home test kits available to hypertension patients who hadn’t taken a uACR test in the last year. The programme reportedly identified 3,342 patients with results requiring follow-up by their GP (34 percent of all tested patients). The work of Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber is also “driving new ideas and delivering change via the Innovation Hub”, and with digital health technology accelerators and incubators such as Propel @YH, Nexus at the University of Leeds and the National Innovation Campus at the University of Huddersfield.

“These efforts help identify promising digital technologies for the West Yorkshire health and care system while also signalling its needs to industry,” the update stated. The ICB, through the Innovation Hub, plays a key role by sitting on regional and national boards such as the Healthtech Cluster, the Investment Zone steering group (run by West Yorkshire Combined Authority), and national bodies like the Association of British Health Technologies Industries. The Innovation Hub also supported the West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s launchpad bid, securing over £7 million in investment for digital health technology aimed at tackling the region’s biggest health challenges, aligning with the ICB’s priorities.

Work is also underway, according to Shaukat’s update, on an All Things Stroke website as a resource for stroke survivors and their carers, hosting a geographical searchable directory of support services across the West Yorkshire and Harrogate region. The ICB recently signed a contract to launch an app for the 250,000 unpaid carers in West Yorkshire, which is set to be released at the beginning of 2026, offering support from uploading important health and legal files, to helping manage household bills and medication, and the ability to access and manage vital health and care information.

For long-term conditions, “work aligns to the operational planning guidance targets to support health inequalities and supports integrated neighbourhood teams and the economic accelerator, aiming to detect people earlier with any CVD risk factors, to either mitigate with lifestyle advice or support diagnosis and best care to keep people well for longer, contributing to our ambition 1 for the ICB”. A device is in use to screen people in the community for atrial fibrillation (AF), with 1,735 people screened to date and the detection of 29 cases of AF.

Digital strategies

North East and Cumbria

In its October meeting, the ICB placed NENC in a “strong position” with regard to strategic work around moving from analogue to digital, but noted that digital infrastructure is an area still requiring investment. Graham Evans, CDIO, also highlighted ongoing work with the Digital Inclusion Group and Gateshead Council to develop a digital inclusion strategy.

The ICB’s latest meeting in June offered more insight, with the chief executive noting in a report the need for “earlier and more collaborative planning and the standardisation and integration of protocols, digital tools, and access to alternative pathways to improve patient flow” for urgent and emergency care, and winter planning. In elective care, the ICB shares current work to explore early risk stratification and low-risk pathways to assess patients who can benefit from digital pre-op assessments, alongside work to facilitate the sharing of best practice and digital innovations aimed at predicting DNAs. Targeted work is ongoing with providers around data quality to improve community waiting list data, and digital plays a role in the ICB’s neighbourhood health plans in terms of both rapid access to data and shared records, and digital tools.

Humber and North Yorkshire

On a dedicated webpage, Humber and North Yorkshire shares some of the ICS’s current focuses around using digital to improve the way services are designed and managed, optimising the value of data and creating intelligence to improve patient safety, supporting research and innovation, developing skills and capabilities, and working to find digital solutions spanning ICS partnerships “that foster collaboration, support investment, ensure economies of scale and reduce duplication”. A digital primary care innovation hub is under development, whilst work continues on the Yorkshire and Humber Care Record, on expanding virtual wards, and on supporting emergency and unplanned care with digital solutions to ensure patients are seen at the right place, at the right time.

In February, the board shared how it is currently drafting an AI Action Plan to maximise the value of AI across providers, including in mental health. The plan addresses training needs, a joint approach to AI safety, improving administrative processes using AI, improving clinical decision support, population health intelligence, links with academic and industry partners, and developing AI workforce skills. The ICB also shared in its Annual Operating Plan – Performance Report in April, where for urgent and emergency care it has partnered with KPMG to focus on improvements to access and pathways using digital solutions. Stakeholders, including acute trusts, are currently being engaged to help drive the programme forward, it states.

West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire ICB sets out key digital projects and areas of work, including for Shared Care Records, where the ICS leads the rollout in West Yorkshire in partnership with the central Yorkshire and Humber Care Record Team. West Yorkshire is also one of five local health and care record exemplars working to facilitate information sharing across organisational borders. A digital social care records pilot is also underway, supporting adult social care providers to adopt digital social care records, to “ensure care teams have the most accurate and timely information at their fingertips to provide outstanding care”.

Elsewhere, the ICS’s projects include GP Online Consultation, the My Pregnancy Journey digital tool, the joining up of maternity care using Yorkshire and Humber Care Record technology to share maternity summary documents between each organisation, and working to improve communication and information flows between GPs and other prescribers, as well as those dispensing within the community. Priority areas for improving outcomes, according to the webpage, include cancer, mental health, learning disabilities and autism, children and young people, carers, and maternity.

South Yorkshire

South Yorkshire ICS’s digital work programme focuses on supporting staff to work flexibly, developing shared digital and IT systems, and taking advantage of new technologies to enable patients to track and monitor their own health from home. With the vision of creating a “fully integrated digital service” across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw and “making more effective use” of the technical expertise already in place across the region, the ICS hopes to grant access to health care records and data for patients. They’re looking at using technology to support clinical and strategic decision-making, reducing duplication and waste, enabling clinicians to provide “the best care in all settings, particularly via the use of mobile technology”, and investing in the infrastructure and technologies required to “enable change and improvements to services and ways of working”.

Discovery sessions around refreshing the ICS’s digital strategy were held in January 2025, with each session offering some insight into future priorities for the region’s digital transformation: digital inclusion and accessibility, Shared Care Record Programme, digital primary care, digitising social care, technology-enabled care, and system integration. The South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Innovation Hub is also playing a “pivotal role” in supporting new ways of working and identifying challenges across the region. They’re working to “signpost and connect multiple areas of the system to ensure that research, evaluation and technology development opportunities are signposted to interested experts from across the system”.

Ensuring future technical sustainability with Rackspace Technology

IT leaders know that data centre management is costly. Whether it’s the opportunity cost of freeing up hospital space for bed’s, mounting technical debt, increasing routine maintenance becoming more time-consuming and expensive. Many do not realise, however, that a piecemeal approach to cloud migration is costly as well. Without a clear plan, healthcare organisations often guess at future licensing or infrastructure needs, overspending upfront when they have approved funds. They also often experience price shock with public cloud when they encounter unexpected data retrieval costs, add capacity at a higher rate or experience rate increases.

A well-designed cloud strategy helps take current and future needs into consideration, it should also be able to work within NHS funding cycles balancing both capex and opex models. This is critical as healthcare organisations struggle to remain fiscally viable amid rising administrative costs, staffing issues and an aging population that suffers from complex chronic conditions.

Solutions and services

Rackspace helps organisations invest in technologies and managed services that can help reduce costs in the long term. By deploying the most appropriate mix of public and private cloud, and by leveraging our scale to manage infrastructure, trusts can build sustainable finance plans that reduce expenses and free up funds for expanded patient care initiatives.

Because we understand that NHS trusts are managing stringent budgets, Rackspace addresses financial sustainability from multiple angles, including:

  • Advisory services: We draw on decades of experience in managing cloud migrations across many sectors to help organisations select the services they need — and avoid those they don’t — to build efficient technology frameworks. Our experts plan cloud migration correctly the first time to prevent missteps and expensive rework.
  • Transparent pricing: Organisations can count on consistent, forecastable pricing for the duration of their contracts, with no hidden fees, increases or variations.
  • Vendor optimisation: Our end-to-end services allow healthcare organisations to work with one vendor across all workloads. Whilst organisations can partner with us at any point in their digital transformation journeys — and for any combination of workloads — our ability to manage all cloud needs from the top down makes us unique in the industry.
  • Data freedom: Rackspace Data Freedom reduces costs and avoids data silos by storing data centrally, outside of any particular public cloud. Data is transported via our private, fast and secure global network backbone, whilst ensuring data is available in any cloud service.

 

The Rackspace comprehensive range of risk mitigation solutions includes:

  • End-to-end data sovereignty: Our Sovereign UK Healthcare Cloud solution was built to meet UK security and compliance needs. It is delivered in air-gapped management environments and serviced entirely by UK sovereign teams.
  • Private cloud AI: Despite the negative news in healthcare cybersecurity, one bright spot is emerging thanks to AI and automation. According to the IBM Cost of a Data Breach report, organisations using AI and automation identified and contained breaches nearly 100 days faster than before and spent nearly 46% less. Rackspace Private Cloud AI lets you leverage AI within a secure environment, providing a full AI software stack and the latest AI-optimised hardware.
  • Certified security and compliance: Our cloud environments are fully NHS-compliant, meeting NCSC, NHS E, NIST standards. Also, we are ISO 27001/9001/27017/27018, Cyber Essentials+ and PSN SP certified.
  • Managed security services: Our security teams are 100% focused on monitoring data, anticipating next-generation malicious attacks, closing vulnerabilities, and standing ready when backup and disaster recovery are needed. As the threat landscape continues to evolve, organisations need a dedicated expert to master the complexities. In addition to state-of-the-art security tools, they also get peace of mind knowing that issues will be rapidly addressed.

 

For more information, please click here >.

Health tech in the North East and Yorkshire: snapshots from the past year

For a HTN Now webinar on building local digital capability in the NHS, we looked at the advantages of digital transformation from within, joined by Clare Green, transformation manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, and Mike Odling-Smee, CEO of Aire Innovate, who talked us through how LTHT engages clinicians to shape its in-house electronic health record, supporting flexibility, scalability and resilience across Leeds and the wider region. “In my experience, clinically-led always gets the best results,” Clare went on, “including in adoption of the solution, engagement in identifying improvements, and supporting the measures of benefits.” That process can be challenging, but the team at Leeds implement the Leeds Improvement Methodology for improvement work, and spend time getting to know the landscape and the “need to know”, walking in colleagues shoes and building up a network of contacts to collect useful information and observations. “I went on bi-weekly ward walks, covering all wards, and this gave me the opportunity to observe process, gather input, and understand what the rocks in the shoes of our clinicians were,” Clare shared. 

Sue Ottley, digital capability transformation manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals joined us for a panel discussion alongside Neill Crump, digital strategy director at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, and Tony Green, lead UX designer at Aire Logic. Our panellists considered what digital literacy looks like for the NHS workforce, outlining current gaps and debating what kinds of digital skills are likely to be required of the NHS workforce of the future. LTHT is currently collaborating with Leeds City College, which offers an EDSQ course around digital skills, Sue shared. “That’s being piloted by our estates and facilities team, and we’re going to monitor progress and see if there’s the appetite there for more cohorts, with the possibility of making it a more regular intervention.” Whilst the course itself is free, the site and equipment to offer it to staff is still a challenge, she considered, “so that’s a bit of a downside”.

Lee Rickles, CIO at Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, joined us for a panel discussion to dissect the findings from Lord Darzi’s report, reflecting on what is holding the NHS back from innovation; the challenges and missed opportunities; and the role of digital and tech in driving change, supporting a focus on prevention and promoting integrated care. On what steps can be taken to realise the ambition of digital integrated care, Lee said, “You realise digital integrated care by not realising it’s actually happening; you don’t have the handoffs, you don’t have the pain, you don’t have the need to enter data on top of your day job because the system is not built in a way that supports clinical practice or administration.” Doing that is “an extremely difficult process” requiring a different mindset, according to Lee, and “needs organisations to move from silo-based to integrated care approaches focused around the patient”.

Rachel Binks, nurse consultant and clinical lead for digital and acute care at NHS Airedale Hub, joined our panel for a discussion exploring the role of digital in supporting self-care and delivering personalised care, looking at how digital can improve patient pathways and experiences, and the data points which should be leveraged to enable health and care organisations to deliver tech-enabled care now and in the future. Rachel talked about the progress made at Airedale from “just using video assessments”, to beginning to use the Luscii app to offer patients information and to collect observations. “From our digital hub, we can see a dashboard of people’s observations and we can set personalised thresholds, so we can see immediately if they begin to deteriorate,” she told us.

David Holland, deputy CCIO for AHPs at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, shared details of work underway around engagement, particularly on developing digital advocates across the trust. “We’ve tried to create a core group of staff who are enabled, empowered and educated to digitally take forward the agenda,” he explained. “At the moment we have about 250, and we are looking to increase that number to about 400, looking for those staff who are the early adopters, innovators, and problem solvers to help us drive transformation.” Having those advocates across every pathway is important, David continued, as it helps the team to understand the opportunities and challenges which might exist in terms of digital. The recent focus has been on Microsoft 365, he went on, “because there’s a huge amount of functionality there, and we’re looking to optimise that and educate our staff to align the usage of the toolkit across the organisation”.

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