Black Country ICB has shared a series of digital updates around its work across digital and data, including AI, shared care records, a digital strategy refresh, and the secondary use of data.
Results from the ICB’s latest digital maturity assessment were discussed, with the board noting that “the ICB has a central position in terms of both the Midlands region and the whole of the NHS”. A working group is now being set up to produce an action plan, and outcomes will be worked into the ICS’s digital strategy, which is due to be refreshed.
A vision, a set of principles, and a high-level milestone plan have been agreed for the Black Country IT Service. Leads have been identified from across the system for different tasks to help promote ownership from partners, and focus areas include the alignment of contracts and infrastructure, proposals for a single IT service, cyber, digital inequalities, digital sustainability, and AI.
On work on bids for NHSE capital funding, the ICB shares: “We have been clear in that to articulate 10-year plans for digital transformation is virtually impossible.” Plans have been submitted covering the continued growth of the shared care record, digitising social care, aspirational AI, AI dictation, upskilling staff in AI, e-triage UEX, digital data transformation, digitising pathology, community EPR, and data warehousing.
The One Health and Care Shared Care Record programme is supporting the delivery of joined-up data from across the ICS, the board highlights, to inform clinical decision-making and planning. “There is a responsibility to apply for a section 251 in order for the data in the shared care record to be used for secondary purposes i.e. PHM & analysis,” it notes. That application is now recorded as having been submitted.
Presenting the report, ICB chair Anu Singh remarked: “Of the three shifts, we recognised at our ICB board development day that we needed to be more deliberate and ambitious around the digital shift. I’m really committed to accelerating our ambitions around how we use data. Whomever I spend time with across our system, we inevitably come away with the ambition to both improve how we collect and how we act on those data insights.”
Wider trend: Health system strategy and transformation
For a recent HTN Now webinar on the subject of digital leadership now and in the future, we were joined by a panel of experts from across the health and care sector, including Penny Kechagioglou, CCIO and consultant clinical oncologist at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire; Kath Potts, chief digital officer at University Hospitals Plymouth; Simon Brown, head of digital at Royal Papworth Hospital; and Harry Thirkettle, director of health and innovation at Aire Logic. Our panel discussed how digital leadership has changed, the role of digital leaders in creating a safe space for innovation, requirements of digital leaders under the 10 Year Plan, and future outlook.
South West London ICB has shared an update on its current cyber assurance and details of system-wide cyber improvement activities, extending to progress around governance and promoting alignment with provider organisations. The update follows news that the ICB’s digital team has secured more than £1 million in funding from NHS England to support its delivery of the SWL Cyber Strategy in 2025/26. The ICB’s latest Cyber Security Strategy set out six objectives to be achieved by 2030: strengthening governance, managing risk, understanding critical systems and suppliers, prevention and resilience, detecting and responding to threats and incidents, and embedding cyber awareness and culture.
Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB and Northamptonshire ICB’s latest five-year strategic commissioning plan to 2031 highlights the move from short-term recovery to longer-term transformation, outlining the role of digital and data in areas such as population health, neighbourhood health, and prevention. The ICBs also share that a new digital and data strategy is expected in September 2026, with a data quality strategy to follow by March 2027. Core commissioning ambitions include improving access and flow for elective care, urgent and emergency care, and neighbourhoods, the ICBs state, modernising pathways, reducing variation, and relying on digital connectivity and shared care records to help deliver care closer to home. Digital and data literacy will be enhanced across the workforce to support a “digital by default” approach to commissioning, and digital tools and real-time data will help promote proactive care.
