A year on from our last coverage, the board of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust has offered an update on its trust strategy, celebrating successes to date, responding to changes in the external environment, and exploring priorities around digital to 2027.
“The Oxleas Strategy 2024 – 27 aligns squarely with the national and regional strategic direction,” Oxleas states. On the link to national priorities, it continues: “Within this new context, we have become clearer about two key elements. The first is the increasing need for a robust grip of our performance data and a proactive approach to targeting areas for improvement. The second is the large number of work programmes we will need to deliver to achieve financial balance by 2027 / 2028.”
Key digital achievements to date include the rollout of digital prescribing in the community, which has resulted in more than 5,500 digital prescriptions being written. 64 percent of clinical staff reported time savings of 15 minutes per day, while 10 percent reported saving more than 30 minutes, the board highlights.
The trust’s online patient portal, Oxcare, is set to be integrated with the NHS App thanks to £500,000 in funding, said to provide enhanced functionality around patient questionnaires and appointment management, as well as reducing the administrative workload for staff. Options for neighbourhood interoperability solutions are being explored to support joined-up care.
A pilot of the SmartNotes Ambient Voice solution for summarising appointments and reducing admin tasks is hoped to “significantly improve” productivity and job satisfaction. A Rio optimisation programme is underway to enhance data capture and improve efficiency, alongside the introduction of a new “About Me” section. The rollout of digital letters has seen a 44 percent adoption rate and an estimated £84,000 saving in postage costs; whilst plans are in place to automate the referral booking process.
Oxleas also highlights enhanced data and reporting through the iFox Wait Times Dashboard, offering real-time visibility on the waits across services, and receiving 1,100 unique monthly visits. New metrics are to be introduced to cover individuals seen/discharged at first appointment. Also on data, preparations to meet new NHSE requirements on Autism and ADHD data collection are reportedly “well underway” to include system updates and revised reporting processes.
The trust is engaged in collaborative work with the One London Data Services team to develop a shared data repository to support public health management, complimented by work on a neighbourhood level with partners such as Guy’s and St Thomas’ to progress the use of identifiable data for risk stratification and neighbourhood working.
Looking ahead, digital questionnaires are to be introduced, including Dialogue Plus, for patient responses to be fed directly into Rio to reduce the need for manual data entry. The trust also talks about assurance around its AI policy, like alignment with South East London standards, information governance, and approved tools including Copilot. Unapproved tools like ChatGPT are now blocked on trust devices, and the board outlines considerations around staff awareness, clinical safety, and regulatory considerations.
“It was agreed that future updates should include a dedicated section on AI developments and governance, including staff education, cultural considerations and the management of external AI use by patients and applicants,” Oxleas shares.
Wider trend: Digital plans and priorities
NHS England has published its medium term planning framework to outline the priority deliverables ICBs and providers should focus on for the next three-to-five years. The framework sets out a new operating model, a revised foundation trust model, the creation of integrated health organisations, changes to the financial framework, and opportunities for greater local autonomy through a neighbourhood health approach.
HTN was joined for a webinar exploring the role of the CIO now and in the future by a panel of experts including Ravi Sahota Thandi, interim operational CIO at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust; Kate Warriner, chief transformation and digital officer at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and #1 in the CIO 100 rankings; and Rhian Bulmer, chief customer officer at Radar Healthcare. Our panel shared their own experiences, discussed the role of the CIO in supporting and developing digital maturity and skills, delivering 10-Year Plan priorities, and what the next 5 – 10 years will look like. Also noted were emerging technologies and opportunities, along with ways of realising digitally-enabled system working.
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. 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.
