Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals (MWL) NHS Trust has outlined progress to date on the trust’s digital strategy, and priorities for 2026 including a collaborative EPR procurement, EPR readiness, AI, and automation.
The trust’s digital strategy was published in March 2024, following the merger of St Helens and Knowsley and Southport and Ormskirk trusts. The separate infrastructure made cross-site working “very difficult”, according to MWL, and as such the digital strategy focused strongly on technical consolidation and solution convergence. Good progress has been made around digital systems, infrastructure, and interoperability since this time, with the trust reporting that thanks to capital investment, “much of the digital foundation has now been completed”, enabling staff to work across any trust sites.
An agreement was made in 2025 to work on a collaborative EPR re-procurement with Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals, with the aim being “a single, shared-instance EPR that delivers clinical standardisation, operational efficiency, and improved integrated care pathways”. Work is underway on pre-market engagement ahead of an expected launch in early 2026.
The trust is similarly looking at EPR readiness and clinical optimisation, with the deployment of CareFlow Narrative, documentation standardisation work, EPMA proof-of-concept testing, the automation of Take Home Medication workflows, and early stage preparations for outpatient clinic redesign.
A “strong technical foundation” is now allowing considerations of innovation with AI and robotic process automation in clinical services, MWL states. The data centre and server replacement programme has been completed, along with migration to a single firewall, and email consolidation. Progress continues on the development of a single domain network.
At present, AI tools and solutions in use across MWL cover the Brainomix diagnostic tool for stroke patients, the Annalise medical imaging decision tool for chest x-rays, the iRefer supportive referral tool for diagnostic services, and the Skin Analytics diagnostic AI tool. Also noted is the C2AI surgical waiting list optimisation solution, Homecare AI, and a D.A.V.E. chatbot used in IT service management. The Netcall Patient Hub DNA AI predictor has not yet been implemented, and a pilot of the Tideway theatre scheduling tool is set to begin in January 2026.
An AI & Automation Steering Group has been established, with plans for 2026 to include the launch of an ambient voice technology pilot, and expansion of AI and automation to support clinical and operational efficiency. The trust also hopes to make progress on the Digital Levelling-Up programme, on telephony and infrastructure convergence, and on the development of a refreshed digital strategy to reflect trust, ICS, and national digital ambitions.
The pilot of ambient voice technology will be carried out with 30 consultants across dermatology, trauma and orthopaedic specialities. Following a review of outcomes, the trust has the opportunity to use licenses purchased by the ICB to fund an extended 12-month pilot, “to allow the trust the time and space to continue to develop the process and embed the use of AI whilst it reviews the capabilities and suitability of use of other AVT solutions as and when they become available,” MWL states. “The greatest impact of an AVT solution will be one that is fully integrated within the EPR, the ambition is to work with our EPR supplier (System C) to also pilot their solution, which will be fully integrated to the EPR solution, once it is available (expected March 2026).”
The trust’s wider focus is shifting to designing “at scale” digital and data architecture, platforms, tools, and services such as shared care records and a neighbourhood health platform, in order to meet the requirements outlined in the NHS Medium Term Planning Framework. High priority use cases for shared care record rollout will be identified, the federated data platform will be used to deliver further “at scale” tools and services to support population health management, and Agentic AI will be piloted in elective care to automate waiting list management.
Wider trend: EPR
A recent HTN Now panel discussion explored EPR customisations for the frontline and how digital transformation can support the direction set in the 10 Year Health Plan. We discussed optimisation, challenges and key learnings from success stories shared by our experts. Panellists included Doctor Stephen Jones, principal clinical psychologist at Sheffield Children’s Hospital; David Wong, associate professor of health data science and health informatics at Leeds University; Mark Simpson, digital innovation leader at Leeds Community Healthcare; and Michael Odling-Smee, CEO at Aire Innovate.
The board of York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shared an update on progress around EPR implementation, next steps, and future focuses for digital. Overall progress is reported as “in line with plan”, with go-live of the first tranche due to begin on 27 February 2026, including observations, clinical documentation for inpatients, urgent & emergency care, electronic prescribing and medicine administration, and read-only diagnostic results. The second tranche, which contains full order comms, is set to go live on 30 June, 2026, with the third to follow on 30 October.
Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust has shared a revised digital roadmap with go-live set for January 2026 of its SystmOne EPR implementation, and an additional £1 million in programme costs. The implementation is continuing, with structured data cleansing, migration, and referral cleanup activities ongoing, according to the trust. The decision to defer the go-live to January is to allow the completion of both data readiness and staff training, it continues, with the projected cost also to rise from £3.5 to £4.46 million due to costs associated with training and manual data migration.
