The Somerset NHS Foundation Trust board in its latest meeting has shared key updates on plans for its EHR, ambient voice, electronic prescribing, and digital medicines.
The EHR procurement has been completed, with rollout planned for 2028, the trust states. It notes that digital resilience “remains a concern” with interoperability and readiness for the EHR requiring “urgent attention”, and that progress is required on data strategy and ensuring alignment with system integration plans.
Progress is also highlighted around medicines management, with the board describing this as “strengthened” via investment in workforce, infrastructure, and digital developments. One such development has been in the rollout of EPMA and plans for electronic outpatient prescribing.
Last year, in a separate update, the board highlighted its successful EPMA rollout and evidence of early impact, including “clear, accessible information” for patients and staff, clinical decision support, and the automation of “many tasks that were traditionally done on paper”. It also offers the ability for information to be shared or transferred between systems, and generates an audit log detailing each step in the process, the trust stated.
Elsewhere, the board outlines progress on strategic aims, such as the expansion of self-referral cancer pathways, “record” Hospital@Home admissions, and the go-live of digital medicines across acute and community. Challenges are noted as digital interoperability, impacting the implementation of Paediatric Early Warning Scores and deteriorating patient metrics, and reportedly “raising wider concerns about assurance during the transition to the Electronic Health Record programme”.
On ambient voice utilisation, the trust highlights neurology, ENT, T&O and gynaecology clinics are using this technology and notes progress supporting improved service delivery.
The trust’s priorities for 2026 focus on reducing long waits and improving access across elective care, transforming urgent and emergency care with the expansion of same-day emergency care and virtual wards, and accelerating the adoption of digital solutions such as the Federated Data Platform and unified electronic patient records.
Wider trend: EPRs
For a HTN Now session on the topic of EPRs now and in the future, we were joined by digital leaders including Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group; Keltie Jamieson, CHIO at Bermuda Hospitals Board; and David Newey, digital health expert and executive CDIO. We heard in depth from our panel in terms of their EPR journey, sharing their approach, examples, challenges and lessons learned. We went on to discuss the current position with EPRs, the opportunity, and the current need. Looking ahead, we discussed what the future of EPRs looks like in the short, medium and longer term.
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust has reviewed its EPR programme, following the implementation of Epic in October 2025, highlighting positive outcomes, learnings, and early service impact. The chief executive noted that the experience of EPR implementation was positive, “the system did not fail, we have not returned to paper, and we reported in the first week post go-live”. Staff were praised for undertaking training, implementation teams were recognised, and particular attention was paid to “extraordinary work” done by training teams, and to the director of digital, logistics and operations, Mike Meers, for his “vision and leadership”.
A roadmap for delivery of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust’s latest strategy to 2030 has outlined a series of digital priorities across the next four years, covering post-go-live EPR optimisation, piloting AI, cloud migration, and a device and infrastructure refresh. For 2026-27, aims include publishing a new digital strategy, post-go-live optimisation of Epic EPR, completing a legacy system risk assessment and prioritised replacement plan, piloting AI solutions, redesigning data governance, and developing a pathology and genetics LIMS. Year two focuses to 2028 cover the cloud migration of non-Epic solutions, and a device and infrastructure refresh, with an AI strategy also set to launch alongside initial AI pilots.
