University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust has published its quality account for 2025/26, outlining successes over the last 12 months including its EPR programme.
“Significant progress” has been made over 2025/26 in delivering the trust’s digital programme in support of safer, more efficient, and more integrated care, University Hospitals Plymouth states, with the formal award of an EPR contract to Epic as part of the One Devon EPR programme. The implementation phase remains ongoing, it continues, with a planned go-live scheduled for July 2026 following a successful go-live at Torbay Hospital in April.
A number of “EPR-enabling” digital improvements, according to the trust, such as the SafeTrace system in pathology, Windows 11 upgrades, the deployment of Nervecentre in same day emergency care, and the optimisation of voice recognition technology, are noted. “The trust also strengthened its focus on digital inclusion through early engagement with staff, patients and community partners ahead of EPR go-live, helping to ensure that new digital services are accessible, support self-management where appropriate, and reduce the risk of exclusion for vulnerable and underserved groups,” it adds.
The Devon EPR is creating a “unified patient data environment” across three trusts with research embedded from go-live, University Hospitals Plymouth notes, whilst Florence Healthcare is digitising trial site files to help shorten setup timelines and improve inspection readiness. “Together these position University Hospitals Plymouth to meet the national 150-day commercial trial setup standard,” it concludes.
The trust has led on the roll out of electronic treatment escalation plan (eTEP) across Devon, making treatment escalation plans digitally accessible and visible across care settings. Housed on the Devon and Cornwall Care Record with plans to be a “key link” with the One Devon EPR solution once live, it is hoped to ensure safer decision-making and to reduce delays in the escalation/deescalation process. Next steps will cover the inclusion of Cornwall.
In other updates, University Hospitals Plymouth shares that community teams now have shared access to digital records via SystmOne, and that Doccla has been introduced into the virtual ward model to support remote monitoring and digitally-enabled care. This is hoped to help identify deterioration earlier and improve clinician’s ability to access real-time patient information. Over 182,500 virtual outpatient appointments were also held in the 2025/26 period, representing 24 percent of total outpatient activity, with the trust stating that this places them in the highest quartile nationally.
Wider trend: NHS trust digital transformation
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust is celebrating the latest “successful” launch of its Clinisys laboratory information system, supported by the Greater Manchester Pathology Network, joining Bolton, Tameside and Glossop, and Northern Care Alliance trusts on implementation. According to Stockport, the new system offers better integration with other systems, meaning the potential to enhance test result processing, get results to colleagues more swiftly, and speed up patient diagnosis and treatment.
A dataset comprising close to 1 million images linked to patient clinical records has been published by Moorfields and UCL with hopes to support the development of AI tools and research on anterior segment conditions including cataracts. The CADMUS dataset reportedly holds 945,243 images from 22,482 unique patients, collected from visits to Moorfields between December 2019 and September 2024. Data from follow-up visits allows the study of disease progression and long-term outcomes, the trust notes.
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust has successfully achieved HIMSS EMRAM Stage 6 accreditation, reportedly for its work on optimising and integrating its EPR. According to the HIMSS website, Stage 6 EMRAM is awarded for organisations leveraging health tech for advanced data exchange and interoperability for improved patient engagement, clinical efficiency, and departmental insights. Claire Orchard, the trust’s deputy CIO, posted the update on LinkedIn, claiming the recognition is not the result of one big push, but rather “hundreds of small, deliberate ones performed by staff across all our hospital sites”.
