North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) NHS Trust in planning an upcoming procurement for a unified CAD and EPR platform, with a total estimated value of £19.3 million.
The trust has issued a market notice ahead of a planned February 2027 tender, indicating requirements for the platform around minimising duplication, improving clinical safety, and ensuring real-time information flow between control room operations and care settings.
The platform should be capable of managing the full patient and incident lifecycle, according to the trust, “from call intake through each care scenario including hear and treat, dispatch, see and treat and see and convey, clinical handover and post event reporting”.
Meeting relevant NHS security, information governance, and availability expectations is also important, NWAS goes on. Contract dates are given as 1 June 2029 to 31 May 2036, with a possible extension to 31 May 2039, a potential ten-year award.
The trust recently published a new strategy to 2031 with focuses on embracing innovation and taking advantage of opportunities from digital and data to better coordinate care, improve clinical decision support, and gain insight into demand.
NWAS sets out ambitions to move to an “integrated, technology-enabled contact model”, to support patients to reach the service through a variety of digital channels and accessible tools, and having contact centres acting as a single integrated system supported by connected digital platforms and AI technologies.
Dispatch processes will be automated, AI and advanced decision support will help ensure high-risk patients are identified early, a remote clinical workforce will support with secondary triage and assessment, and alternative pathways with partners will be enabled by digital solutions for seamless care transfer, the trust states.
Wider trend: Health tech transformation across ambulance services
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust has shared insights and upcoming milestones from its digital transformation programme, noting details of work around data, AI, and auto-dispatch. The service sets out a series of priority workstreams for clinical productivity, including auto-allocation of calls (hear & treat), with emergency operations centre roll out in Q1 2026/27; automation of its emergency crew advice line process with go-live expected by the end of Q3 2026/27; and ongoing work to optimise EPR information flows. Automation of clinical audit is currently being scoped, with plans for delivery in Q3 2026/27.
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust has published its Strategic Estates Plan to 2035, outlining its future state vision and plans for a strategic hub model enabled by technology. “The current EMAS estate was constructed for an ambulance service model that no longer reflects the scale, complexity, or operational needs of today’s service,” the trust shares. “Through a structured, prioritised programme, EMAS can secure an estate that is fit for purpose for the future, supporting next-generation emergency care for our people and patients.”
London Ambulance Service NHS Trust has reported on progress including work on implementing a new digital and data operating model and its plans for a 12 month automation programme focusing on low-level processes. User acceptance testing has been completed for its electronic controlled drug record programme and the trust notes early results from ambient voice technology use, showing improvements in productivity and documentation quality, along with reduced admin burden for clinicians.
