Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Group has published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2024/25, highlighting a number of digital developments across digital inequalities, cyber, EPR, digital tooling, and the Great North Care Record. “As part of our ongoing efforts to improve productivity and deliver cost savings, we have implemented several digital solutions that enhance the efficiency of services,” the trust shares. “These developments focus on the optimisation of systems, streamlining workflows, and reducing administrative burdens.”
Work with neighbouring trusts saw the launch of a regional digital patient referral platform, Connect NENC, in November 2024, with Newcastle Hospitals onboarding several specialties during the first phase, including renal, neurosurgery, and spinal surgery. The trust is also hosting the Great North Care Record, which reached a milestone of a million monthly views from more than 30,000 members of staff in March 2025.
“Positive progress” is said to have been made around the implementation of the trust’s patient engagement portal to help patients access information via the NHS App from their phone or computer, with the introduction of outpatient letters into the app in November 2024. The trust also launched virtual wards for frailty and respiratory patients, with vital signs measured and recorded at home and shared with staff via an online platform.
On its EPR, the trust reports findings from a survey of staff, with 1,000 responses helping identify key issues such as slow system speed, data accessibility, and documentation burden. It shares benefits around the move to remotely hosted EPR servers, including staff time savings, strengthened cyber security, and reduced risk of data centre outages. Care plans have been optimised within the EPR, covering pain and falls prevention, and three dynamic end of shift documents have been improved to standardise nursing documentation. A “long awaited” upgrade to ophthalmology EPR has been made, and the mediSIGHT platform is reportedly helping improve data collection quality for national reporting, medication management, and device integration.
Improvements have been made to trust Wi-Fi networks and phone servers, work is underway to upgrade 15,000 digital devices to Windows 11, and over 2,000 devices have been replaced or upgraded. The trust’s service management team, that focuses on maintaining digital platforms and hardware, took more than 158,000 calls over the last 12 months, with 193,000 tickets raised and resolved.
Cyber security updates outlined by the trust include that multi-factor authentication is now in place for all NHSmail users and for the trust’s new intranet platform. Work is ongoing to ensure cyber resilience, with advanced threat detection technologies implemented and established response protocols in place.
A series of targeted initiatives to tackle digital inequality have been introduced to support vulnerable groups and those who may face challenges with digital literacy, and the trust continues to work with regional partners and the ICB’s digital inclusion steering group to share best practice.
Elsewhere, the trust reports that the digitisation of its dental hospital is “well underway”, with updates being made to patient management systems and digital workflows, and training underway for staff on digital processes and ordering. A merge of two SystmOne units for health visiting and school health has resulted in improved data reporting and record keeping, meaning staff “no longer need to navigate two systems when dealing with the safeguarding of vulnerable children, young people and adults”.
In June, Newcastle Hospitals entered into data partnerships with Flatiron Health and Promptly Health, to support the development of research-ready datasets to help improve patient care, focus on value of its data, and promote data-driven innovation. Expertise from the selected data partners will be used to help turn a wide range of de-identified information into anonymised datasets, with suggested uses including in predicting those at risk for worsening symptoms or the side effects of treatment. Commercial researchers such as pharmaceutical companies will be charged to access data, and any income generated in this way will be invested back into NHS care, the trust shared.
Wider trend: Digital progress from across the NHS
East London NHS Foundation Trust has published a strategy impact report to 2025, reflecting on key achievements and progress as its former 2021 strategy comes to an end. The trust also shares that a new strategy will be developed over the summer, encouraging stakeholders to engage with this process and have their say in shaping upcoming plans and objectives.
The digital health and care directorate in Scotland has issued an update for 2025/26 on its national digital health and care strategy delivery plan, pointing to current status and anticipated delivery dates for work across digital access, inclusion, services, foundations and skills. This follows a number of developments towards a renewed focus, it states, aligning with NHS Scotland’s operational improvement plan.
In the final instalment of our ICS region series, we turned our attention to the North East and Yorkshire, delving into digital strategies, recent insights, the latest on digital transformation from the region, and more.
