Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has implemented a digital baby diary in women’s and children’s services, introduced a digital system for children and young people with diabetes, and plans to replace its imaging systems in Autumn.
The trust is moving from its existing picture archiving and communications system and radiology information system to systems from Intelerad and Aptvision, secured through the West of England Imaging Network procurement framework alongside partners in the region. The trust board shares that procuring the systems in this way is hoped to make sharing of images and workflows across the region easier, and provide clinicians access to more complete imaging histories. Go-lives are due to take place in Autumn 2026, with teams working to ensure they can be introduced “as smoothly as possible”, and a testing phase to be completed prior to go-live.
A specialist digital system has been introduced to support the care of children and young people with diabetes, according to the board. The system, Twinkle, is reportedly designed to support clinical decision making, by reducing reliance on manual processes and improving access to real-time data. “The introduction of Twinkle strengthens the trust’s ability to monitor clinical outcomes and manage patient information in a more structured and reliable way, supporting improvements in quality of care and compliance with national reporting requirements,” the board notes.
Also highlighted is the implementation of the BadgerDiaries digital baby diary in women’s and children’s services, aligned with the ambition to create a single, consistent digital offer for families. The platform works by promoting secure communication and access to information about a baby’s care, hoped to support greater involvement and reassurance “during often complex and sensitive care pathways”. The board explains that the move to a single system helps to simplify the service’s digital estate, improving consistency for staff, and facilitating communication between clinical teams and families. The system also offers a financial saving compared with the trust’s prior arrangement, it adds.
Wider trend: Digital in children’s health
Earlier this year, we caught up with Daniel Ray, CTO at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, to learn more about what went into the development of the trust’s new digital strategy, covering key points, ambitions, and hopes for the future. “BWC went live with Epic in May of last year, which was an unbelievable feat that was three or four years in the planning and a huge team effort, but it has been a massive leap forward in our digital and data setup,” he said. “The last five years has been about doing the groundwork and improving our infrastructure, and the strategy is going to help us with where to go from here.”
NHS England has published a preliminary market engagement notice with a total value of up to £110 million, hoping to inform the future of children’s digital health services. Ambitions are to modernise services including the child health information service, antenatal and newborn screening programmes, and a digital alternative to the Red Book. The wider vision, according to NHSE, is to develop a suite of digital and data services to support preventative health and care services for children, requiring “an approach that does not just digitise processes, but rethinks healthcare delivery to support changing behaviours and lifestyles through information, advice and support, drawing on understanding of motivations and behaviours, and tapping into the potential of new technologies, including artificial intelligence”.
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has reflected on achievements from 2025/26, highlighting work on quality, access, and innovation, and “significant, evidenced improvements” to services for families. Efforts to improve clinical record keeping are delivering safer care, higher-quality documentation, and better efficiency, the trust states, with a “high engagement approach” taken to embedding changes, involving site walkarounds led by the deputy medical director, CNIO, and associate director for health records. The full roll out of the Careflow Narrative EPR has helped to improve access to real-time patient information, reduced duplication, and strengthened auditability, according to Sheffield Children’s. Refreshed nursing quality dashboards are promoting improvements in record accuracy and compliance with ID bands and allergies, and digital care plans and assessments are supporting more personalised and proactive care, with earlier discharge planning and a clearer understanding of patient needs.
