University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (UHN), a recent HTN Now Awards finalist in two categories, shared how their project working with Isla Health tackled the challenge of managing complex clinical pathways and the mountain of paperwork their NHS teams managed.
UHN re-engineered operations across 15 specialties, dismantling administrative bottlenecks to create faster, data-driven workflows. The results have been transformative.
The project represents a blueprint for optimising pathways using digital tools, to reduce costs and reclaim frontline capacity.
Re-engineering clinical operations
“At University Hospitals of Northamptonshire, our partnership with Isla Health has fundamentally re-engineered clinical operations across 15 specialties. We dismantled manual administrative bottlenecks to create agile, data-driven clinical workflows. This didn’t just digitise care pathways; it optimised throughput and accelerated care delivery.”
This operational shift transformed the Paediatric Epilepsy workflow, reducing administrative processing time from 3 days to 10 minutes. In Pain Management, referral turnaround time dropped from 8 days to 1.5 days.
Crucially, patient-initiated workflows drive this efficiency. The project enabled 10,620 patients to self-manage administrative tasks remotely, releasing significant clinical capacity. This has shifted the operational burden to automated systems, releasing vital capacity back to clinical teams.
As Lauren Candy, Pain Management Clinic Lead, puts it:
“We have just sent out a list of new patient questionnaires to patients, and it worked perfectly with no issues. The time taken to do this was so much quicker than the old method, too. As a team, we now look forward to using Isla and the daily task of sending out the questionnaires.”
Key Performance Statistics
- Faster Epilepsy Processing: Video processing time slashed from 3 days to just 10 minutes for 730 patients.
- Quicker Pain Management: Form return time decreased from 8 days to 1.5 days for 4,183 patients.
- Patients Empowered: 10,620 patients now manage their care from home through new digital pathways.
- Patient-led Submissions: Patients initiated over 23,000 of the 30,227 total submissions.
The Challenge and Strategy
- The Problem: Fragmented ‘snapshot’ appointments disrupted the care pathway, wasting clinical time and leaving patient data isolated in administrative bottlenecks.
- The Strategy: A direct response to the NHS ‘Productivity Puzzle’, aligning with the ‘Fit for the Future’ agenda to digitise the pathway.
- The Ambition: Operational efficiency (cutting processing times/costs), clinical productivity (faster triage/diagnosis), and inclusive care (digital-first, no apps or log-ins required) .
Current Scale and Future Vision
- Current Scale: Live across 15 specialties with 163 clinicians actively using the Isla platform.
- Immediate Expansion: Scoping implementation for Urology, ENT, Cardiology, and Respiratory Physiology departments.
- 2030 Vision: Target of 200 optimised clinical pathways supporting the NHS Long Term Plan for digital outpatient care.
About Isla Health
University Hospitals of Northamptonshire is leading the charge in healthcare innovation, establishing itself as a tech-forward changemaker tackling the NHS “productivity puzzle” head-on. By leveraging Isla, the first purpose-built Digital Pathway Platform (DPP), UHN has moved far beyond simple digitisation to implement a vital technology layer that transforms repetitive clinical tasks into intelligent, scalable workflows. This proactive approach directly protects clinical time and eliminates the fragmented, manual processes that traditionally lead to staff burnout.
Today, Isla’s impact scales across the healthcare landscape, powering more than 40 clinical specialties within 40+ NHS Trusts and processing over 3 million patient submissions; an average of one every three minutes. By reclaiming frontline capacity and achieving an increase in clinic capacity, the solution enables clinicians to see more patients while significantly reducing Trust costs. This co-developed solution ensures that teams can finally shift their focus away from the mountain of paperwork and back to what matters most: the patient.
Below is the broader impact seen across partner Trusts using Isla’s digital pathway platform as part of their daily workflow:
- 36% of face-to-face visits avoided.
- 75% same-day de-escalations.
- 85% faster referral to treatment.
- 3.8x more clinic capacity.
This project was recognised in the HTN Now Awards 2025/26 under two categories:
To read the full case study blueprint, please click here.
