The board of Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group, covering Lincolnshire Community Health Services (LCHS) NHS Trust and United Lincolnshire Hospitals (ULTH) NHS Trust, has updated on digital work stream progress and remaining group development programme milestones, recognising “good progress” but “slippage on agreed timescales for some actions”.
An exercise to map digital systems across the group and to plan for their alignment where feasible was completed in 2025, covering Datix, intranet, ESR, and document management systems. EDMS initiation is listed as “in progress”, and the group intranet delivery on track. The group notes “some limitations due to existing contracts and sovereignty requirements e.g. finance, ESR”.
The board reports that digital initiatives including the EDMS and virtual consultations are enabling the reduction of physical records and promoting remote care pathways. The launch of an EPR programme at ULTH in September has been followed by engagement events with more than 1,500 colleagues, it shares, with a focus on maintaining this momentum moving forward. Also, a Digital Innovations Group has been established to accelerate the safe use of AI technologies across the group.
Work to move to a single Microsoft 365 teams platform with the migration of ULTH to the national tenancy has been completed, but actions are ongoing to optimise and standardise processes. Likewise, the move to a single domain/directory login process to support integration between acute, community, and primary care has been completed with further work to be done around optimisation and standardisation.
Also completed has been the transition of LCHS from AGEM IT support to the group digital support system, providing the creation of a “common identity” for the digital team, and a move to aligned telecoms with a new 12-month group contract in place and further plans for the procurement of group-level services.
A new data centre is in development at the Pilgrim Hospital site, and action is to be taken to improve trust handling of records. An Enabling Tech programme is in place to improve the trust foundations for its digital services, covering work to mature backup capabilities and recovery, with a new backup and recovery tool in place providing both on-site and cloud capability along with immutable capability.
“The trust is currently carrying a significant number of risks associated with the reliance on part-based health records and legacy stand-alone digital systems,” the board highlights. “There is currently an inability to deliver the required level of patient safety that is enabled by technology and innovation, via more robust and consistent clinician decision making and access to the right information in the right place at the right time.” The delivery of EPR and EDMS to digitise paper records is listed as a progress update.
Wider trend: Trust digital transformation
Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has published its trust strategy and clinical strategy for 2025 – 2030, with a focus on a multi-year digital transformation programme set to improve service integration, build capability, realise benefits, ensure effective use of data, and standardise services. As well as getting the basics right and embedding continuous improvement, Black Country Healthcare commits in its trust strategy to develop digital maturity through implementing and realising benefits from solutions including its EPR and patient engagement portal. Integrated teams will be key to fully enable the intended value of digital solutions, it continues, and an emphasis will be placed on providing care “in the right place at the right time”.
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust has published its three-year trust strategy, supported by a series of enabling strategies outlining plans and priorities for care, people, working together, and research and innovation. The trust commits to exploring the potential uses of digital solutions and delivering digitally empowered care, vowing to use technology to make care more accessible and personalised, and to support colleagues to work “efficiently and effectively”. Plans around digitally empowered care involve promoting digital access to services and support, introducing new digital tools to make care more efficient, embracing new ways of working enabled by digital, and making it easier to collect, use, and share data to facilitate the planning of services and evidence-based decision making.
Following the announcement that Warrington and Halton Hospitals (WHH) and Bridgewater Community Healthcare (BCH) trusts will be joining to become one single organisation integrating community and hospital services, key milestones have been shared to underpin the organisations’ approach to digital integration. Existing reciprocal access arrangements will support staff in accessing each trust’s EPR systems. A digital transition plan is in the works to align core systems and digital services, whilst “robust” transition plans are to be drawn-up for critical systems such as EPRs and clinical applications. A phased approach is focusing on areas where integration is “most urgent and impactful”, and the day one focus will be ensuring continuity of critical clinical and operational systems, as well as maintaining staff access to essential digital tools.
