In November, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust shared updates and priority areas as its Connect EPR programme moves from the implementation to the stabilisation phase.
On the priority areas for stabilisation the trust notes a focus on redesigning of clinics within Connect to improve patient bookings, ensuring no gaps in system design around workflows may hinder the delivery of patient care, and ensuring correspondence is “being completed and messaged in a timely way” with an initial focus on discharge summaries and clinical letters. Teams will be mobilised to support stabilisation across the organisation, and work will take place on key administrative pathways.
A full review of the discharge process has been undertaken based on staff feedback. On the specific process in the EPR, if all fields are not completed, or if the “save and submit” button is not used, letters are held in draft by the system, STH states. In line with this, a process has been developed to monitor and review letters held in draft to ensure missing information is completed so that the letter can be sent out. A user adoption group is supporting staff with discharge and clinical correspondence processes, with the trust acknowledging a “positive impact on successful completion of inpatient discharge summaries where specific support has been provided”.
Other areas of work include the removal of paper notes, with a focus on identifying reasons for a failure in “paper lite” adoption in identified areas. The Patient Portal UK project is also reportedly “proceeding according to the overall project plan”, with the trust now live with NHS App integration. The introduction of the Dragon Medical One Speech Recognition solution has been accelerated, with the technical aspects of making it available within Connect having been completed, and the system to be piloted across all directorates to inform final rollout.
“Benefits realisation and financial considerations remain key drivers as the programme progresses through stabilisation and into the optimisation phase,” STH shares. “Areas of the programme of particular relevance include: Paperlite; Hybrid Mail; switch off of legacy systems; introduction of Dragon Medical One digital dictation; plan to roll out PPUK.”
Its Connect Patient Safety Group continues to oversee clinical and operational risks, and mechanisms are in place for primary care colleagues to report issues alongside the Datix reporting system, the trust notes. Delivery of priority stabilisation areas is overseen by the Organisational Transformation Group, which meets weekly, whilst “regular meetings between members of the Programme Leadership team and Care Group leadership teams continue to actively seek feedback from triumvirates and their senior teams”.
Wider trend: EPR
A recent HTN Now panel discussion explored EPR customisations for the frontline and how digital transformation can support the direction set in the 10 Year Health Plan. We discussed optimisation, challenges and key learnings from success stories shared by our experts. Panellists included Doctor Stephen Jones, principal clinical psychologist at Sheffield Children’s Hospital; David Wong, associate professor of health data science and health informatics at Leeds University; Mark Simpson, digital innovation leader at Leeds Community Healthcare; and Michael Odling-Smee, CEO at Aire Innovate.
The board of York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has shared an update on progress around EPR implementation, next steps, and future focuses for digital. Overall progress is reported as “in line with plan”, with go-live of the first tranche due to begin on 27 February 2026, including observations, clinical documentation for inpatients, urgent & emergency care, electronic prescribing and medicine administration, and read-only diagnostic results. The second tranche, which contains full order comms, is set to go live on 30 June, 2026, with the third to follow on 30 October.
Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust has shared a revised digital roadmap with go-live set for January 2026 of its SystmOne EPR implementation, and an additional £1 million in programme costs. The implementation is continuing, with structured data cleansing, migration, and referral cleanup activities ongoing, according to the trust. The decision to defer the go-live to January is to allow the completion of both data readiness and staff training, it continues, with the projected cost also to rise from £3.5 to £4.46 million due to costs associated with training and manual data migration.
