Hampshire and Isle of Wight Acute Provider Collaborative (APC) has outlined progress and next steps toward the provision of a single EPR across the ICB’s four acute trusts.
Progress to date includes process mapping and benefits, the APC shares, and noting procurement support has also been secured. £60 million of frontline digitisation funding offered in 2025/26 has been withdrawn after “significant efforts”, with the collaborative having now commissioned Accenture to help resubmit a revised outline business case with prioritised funding from the frontline capabilities programme, expected to be announced shortly.
Looking ahead, the APC outlines actions for Q1 including completing a further round of pre-market engagement, developing invitation to tender documentation, and beginning the approvals process. Also identified is the need to agree funding with NHS England for 2025/26 to support technical readiness and engagement, and for technical workstreams to review the inclusion of migration to a single electronic document management system and network strategy.
The workplan moves on to set out programmes of work for clinical services review and acute operating model, elective hubs, aseptic units, and shared corporate services.
The latest Joint Forward Plan from Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB shares renewed ambitions around information sharing, digital access, and innovation in the region. It places focus on enabling proactive care, better supporting the workforce, and maximising the potential of digital and data across health and care services. Results from a a public survey conducted in summer 2024, which received more than 700 responses, are currently being used to inform the development and delivery of future digital services, it states.
HIoW also sets out plans around capital and estates, including investments in digital and technology. Hospitals and health services are being modernised with New Hospital funding, whilst primary care IT and EPR implementation are listed as “major capital schemes”.
Wider trend: Electronic patient records
For a recent HTN Now panel discussion on EPR best practices, we welcomed experts from across health and care, including Sally Mole, digital programme manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Fhezan Ashraf, clinical configuration manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Stacey Spence, EPR programme manager at Medway NHS FT and Hayley Grafton, CNIO at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The discussion began with wider introductions, where each of our experts gave an overview of their own go-live projects before moving onto post go-live best practices, exploring key learnings and challenges when it comes to engaging the workforce and measuring adoption.
A recent NHS England board meeting offered insights on maximising productivity following EPR implementation, with the board discussing the potential to create a blueprint to allow learnings from both successful and unsuccessful implementations. This will support the next stage, being the analysis of standardisation, wider business change, local capabilities, and the impact of “peripheral technologies e.g. ambient voice”.
OneAdvanced has completed the purchase of assets relating to the Vision EPR system from In Practice Systems (INPS), ending “six months of uncertainty” for GPs and current users of the software. The company shares that by combining the Vision EPR solution with OneAdvanced’s healthcare portfolio, it hopes to create a powerful healthcare platform capable of aligning with the NHS 10-Year Plan. The company highlights its ambition for “the OneAdvanced platform to pave the way for a unified, AI-driven national health system, that is fundamental to achieve the governments neighbourhood care ambitions.”
The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust has highlighted digital achievements including the launch of its Alex Health electronic health record and the My Alex Health patient portal. The EPR was launched in November 2024, as a single digital record of a patient’s care, including health history, treatment records, medical conditions, and allergies. Its introduction followed testing over the spring and summer months of 2024, with the trust identifying the process for migrating data from old systems, and running a “Stop, Start, Continue” information campaign showing staff how specific daily tasks would change and preparing them for training.
