Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust has chosen Civica to provide an electronic document management (EDMS) system, awarding the software company £787,000 as part of the contract.
The trust aims to use Civica’s solution to improve document and information access while also complying with the latest NHS information governance standards. It will reportedly be used to help “lay the foundations for a more integrated, data-driven healthcare environment” throughout the trust, as part of their wider digital transformation strategy.
The contract is said to span a 4-year period from October 2025 to October 2029, serving a large population across the North Kent and Southeast London regions.
This follows the trust’s recent rollout of the electronic test ordering system, Clinisys ICE, introduced to all wards in June of this year, supporting the move from a 25-year-old, paper-based system to a digital one. According to the trust, the system “allows GPs and other health professionals to request diagnostic tests quickly and easily at point of care”.
In September, Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust explored how the organisation aligns with the NHS 10 year plan, to explore opportunities and make strategic recommendations. The activity was to inform focus areas including MDT integrated neighbourhood teams, MDT career pathway development, NHS App uptake, and leadership development.
Wider trend: From paper to digital
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust recently went live with the CCube electronic document management system by Noveva Software Group. The platform was implemented across the trust, following a migration of 8 million digital documents from the previous incumbent Kainos Evolve system. The trust’s in-house scanning bureau is also scanning patient documents into the CCube platform, supporting the organisation in making a rich patient record available to health and care teams across the organisation.
For one of our latest panel discussions, we explored how organisations are tackling the challenges of paper and digital records. Our panellists included Stacey Sutherland, clinical digital documentation lead and change lead for trust-wide division at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton and Chesterfield Royal Hospital; Caroline Holmes, deputy director of patient data and records, digital services, at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust; Stefan Chetty, director of digital services at Restore Information Management; and Andrew Robertshaw, implementation manager at Restore Information Management. Panellists shared their progress, approach, insights around overcoming challenges in this space, and what worked well.
Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust shared insights into digital progress and priorities, outlining risks associated with digital systems sustainability and the latest updates on plans for a single EPR. By March 2027, NCA plans to procure and implement a single centralised electronic document management system, with activities to be completed, including digital destruction to support data migration and clinical documentation standardisation with “increased governance”.
