Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust, Our Dorset digital strategy to 2030 has been published, sharing the aim to create a “seamless, integrated digital ecosystem that empowers staff, improves patient experiences, and leverages emerging technologies like AI to deliver equitable, efficient, and person-centred care across all health and social care settings”.
The strategy is centred around four strategic themes: efficiency and productivity; safe use; digitise, connect, transform; and research and innovation. It also sets out four objectives to be achieved over the next five years to cover: building a sustainable digital workforce, transforming how patients access and engage with healthcare, building an ecosystem where data drives decision-making, and creating a culture of continuous learning around digital roles, training, and development.
Outlining how care will be enabled across settings, Our Dorset points to insights from a digital strategy questionnaire in which only eight out of 421 respondents felt digital systems supported joined-up care “extremely well”. It cites uneven digital maturity and poor interoperability across sites as contributing factors. In the future, work will be done toward granting every clinician and patient in Dorset secure access to the right information, via “systems that talk to each other across all care settings”. Digital decisions will be made once and will prioritise long-term value over short-term fixes, and tech will enable proactive, preventative, and personalised care through areas such as a single patient record and AI diagnostics.
Specifically, actions to be taken to better enable joined-up care include using FHIR API standards to ensure systems can communicate and share data effectively, centralising EPRs to include more care settings and data, and eliminating paper. Decisions and governance over digital strategy will be delivered as a system, with shared ownership, co-creation, data sharing agreements, and technology to support collaboration and standardised working.
On workforce, Our Dorset shares that the digital strategy questionnaire uncovered that “staff confidence is mixed” when it comes to using digital technologies. “Of the 421 responses to the questionnaire, only 82 staff reported being extremely confident using digital tools and 43 were not confident at all, with most falling in between,” it states. With this in mind, the focus for the next five years will be on building digital skills and capability, growing a sustainable talent pipeline through education, retention, and mobility, and standardising training.
Digital leadership will be responsible for making sure selected technologies are fit for purpose, owning relationships with suppliers, and overseeing the safe transition from legacy digital systems. Operational leadership will help teams prepare for the impact of the transition to digital, drive for standardised operating procedures, promote uptake and adoption, and ensure staff are trained and supported. Clinical leadership will ensure digital systems improve patient safety, reduce clinical error, and support equitable access, championing safe adoption and empowering staff to use digital tools confidently and responsibly.
The digital strategy questionnaire also highlighted challenges around system reliability, according to Our Dorset, with 58 percent of respondents reporting that “outages had affected their work”. In response, the next five years will see work to establish a common and connected digital infrastructure, reduce technical debt, standardise hardware and software procurement, the implementation of common platforms across areas such as HR and finance, and the adoption of cloud-based solutions for data storage and applications. Clinical-led digital transformation, single sign-on, and green IT infrastructure are all key focuses.
Our Dorset aims to improve use of data for neighbourhood health, population health management, and moving from a reactive to a proactive model of care. This will involve eliminating data siloes and strengthen data sharing across all sectors, embedding analysts in clinical teams, aligning with the Federated Data Platform, and to develop a “robust and scalable” data architecture across the ICS, leveraging cloud technologies to share datasets between providers and partners.
On prevention and population health, Our Dorset shares aims to advance the Dorset Intelligence and Insight Service (DiiS) to gain a deeper understanding of population behaviours and timely interventions, to develop risk stratification tools to identify high-risk patients and allow early intervention, and to advance from basic dashboards to advanced statistical modelling, demand and capacity forecasting, machine learning, and predictive analytics. New insights will be gathered from a range of data sources, drawing value from clinical notes and imaging by using AI and analytics.
“Staff confidence in cyber practices is low, with wide variation in awareness and education, highlighting the need for consistent training and a system-wide approach to cyber resilience,” Our Dorset notes. In the future, cybersecurity frameworks and remediation plans will be shared and standardised, a shared cybersecurity operating model will be established, tooling will be upgraded to meet evolving threats, and legacy systems will be upgraded to minimise vulnerabilities.
Following board approval, the next step for Our Dorset will be to develop the accompanying roadmap for the strategy delivery. Work will begin on this with a planning workshop, which is scheduled for January 2026.
Wider trend: Digital strategy
Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust have published their latest Digital Strategy, setting out a roadmap to 2031, with year one focuses including OneEPR design, infrastructure design and virtual hospital; before moving into AI integration, EPR optimisation, data platform deployment, AI-driven pathways, and “smart” hospital operations. By 2030, the trusts hope to have 80 percent of patients using the patient portal, to have reduced medication errors by 50 percent with EPR, to release 100,000 hours per year in time saved through automation, to reduce outpatient DNAs by 30 percent, and to have reduced admission for long-term conditions by 15 percent.
Lincolnshire Community and Hospitals NHS Group, made up of United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals and Lincolnshire Community Health Services trusts, has published a new digital strategy to 2028, noting the need to go further faster, leverage increased scale, and larger and “more ambitious” research and innovation. It reflects on its best of breed technology approach, noting challenges with integration and duplication, highlighting the intention to reduce the number of systems in use by 50 percent going forward.
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s latest digital strategy and new AI framework have set out objectives, principles, and guidelines on the implementation of technology across the trust and the future use of AI. Priority areas of focus for the next five years include electronic prescribing in community, exploring patient portal options, employing ambient voice technology, focusing on data-driven care, and pursuing EPR developments. Setting out an ideal patient journey in 2030, CWP looks to use voice technology, digital appointment management, options for direct communication with GPs, electronic prescriptions “straight from health record to pharmacy”, and shared care records to reduce duplication.
