Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber (RDaSH) NHS Foundation Trust has outlined a series of digital plans and priorities as IT spend becomes the trust’s “largest single expenditure of capital” for the first time in 2026/27, overtaking building maintenance or refurbishment.
“From 2026/27 there are a number of critical ‘extend or renew’ decisions that will need to be assessed and funded,” RDaSH states. “These include firewalls; servers and data storage; telephony; back-up hardware replacement; anti-virus software; wide area network replacement; and endpoint replacement. There is also the exciting prospect of ambient voice technology supporting enhanced clinical care and increased productivity.”
No further extension is available beyond September 2027 for the trust’s current Mitel telephony platform, the board notes, after which time it anticipates a move to a “more consolidated” platform, enabling a planned transition to a Microsoft Teams-based solution.
The trust’s firewall contract is also set to expire in July 2027, with the board highlighting this as “an opportunity to transition to a cloud based design that offers improved business continuity and better alignment with future estates plans”. It considers there may be benefits for moving to a cloud solution ahead of the contract end to align with planned estate changes, promoting flexibility and future-ready infrastructure.
Moving on to data storage, the trust shares that it has been actively making a transition to a cloud-centric model, with key systems including clinical, finance, HR, and procurement, now cloud-based. RDaSH currently operates around 150 servers hosted on Dell hardware using VMware virtualisation, it explains. This supports core services such as databases, identity and authentication services, data warehouse, and SQL platforms.
“Despite this progress, continued reliance on on-premise infrastructure remains to support access to these cloud services,” RDaSH updates. “Although common across the public sector, RDaSH has relatively few systems that must remain on-premise. Migrating the majority of services to a cloud or hybrid cloud model would improve availability and resilience while reducing dependence on legacy infrastructure and associated costs such as power, cooling, and physical security.” Consideration is now being given to migrating to a cloud solution ahead of a March 2027 contract end date.
An update is also offered on the RDaSH endpoint replacement programme, which the trust reports helps keep up with increasing tech requirements and the demands of agile working. “However, the executive during Q1 2026/27 will want to be persuaded of the right combination of technology needed by our 4,000 employees for their role – with a focus on the forthcoming remote working framework, and an emphasis on mobile working,” it continues. “Both these ideas have considerable interdependencies to the Estate Plan.”
The trust estimates that the capital costs of these programmes will be more than £11 million between 2026/27 and 2029/30. Whilst board colleagues “may be concerned that the true expenditure need over the coming period exceeds that shown”, external capital or income associated with AI and productivity is anticipated, it goes on. “This has been the pattern for some years, and as such we have a measure of confidence that we can ladle new funds into our ambitions in addition to that shown.”
Wider trend: NHS Trust investment in digital
Cheshire and Merseyside ICB has outlined a range of digital plans and priorities to 2031 in its five-year clinical and strategic commissioning plan, also incorporating system ambitions for population health improvement, and advising of a £29.6 million transformation fund for 2026-27. The ICB commits to a single multi-year digital investment model incorporating provider organisations, primary care, and wider system stakeholders as a single enterprise. Other plans include the delivery of digital tools to support clinical workflows, improve operational productivity and empower patients; the use of data-driven intelligence to inform clinical decisions and improve outcomes; embracing AI to “radically transform” how the system operates; and establishing a digital centre of excellence to coordinate innovation and horizon scanning.
Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has announced a 10-year agreement for the Nervecentre electronic patient record system across the trust’s hospitals. The £53 million agreement will see Aintree University Hospital, Broadgreen Hospital and Royal Liverpool University Hospital utilise the single, integrated digital patient record, joining 15 trusts now committed to Nervecentre. The system is planned to replace “a complex landscape of existing digital systems”, the trust said. Adding that “LUHFT will continue to work closely with Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, The Walton Centre and The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, as they progress business cases to adopt the same EPR system. This approach supports the long‑term vision for a shared EPR across Liverpool’s adult and specialist services, enabling greater integration and consistency of care.”
Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has shared learnings and outcomes from its £21.1 million Time to Care project, citing “substantial progress” in delivering a new engagement-led operating model along with “meaningful cultural change” across services. Key achievements, the trust notes, include establishing a new operating model in inpatient and urgent care services built around purposeful admission, therapeutic care, trauma-informed care, and safe and effective discharge; embedding co-production with the help of lived experience ambassadors; and the successful recruitment of 333.7 WTE roles to strengthen inpatient MDT team capacity and introduce new roles such as peer support workers and activity coordinators.
