Publishing their five-year strategic commissioning plan in line with the NHS England medium-term planning requirements, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin ICB has shared ambitions for shared care records, AI, remote monitoring, data, digital diagnostics, and more.
The ICB states that digital and data transformation “underpins all intentions, including wider use of shared care records, AI‑enabled triage, remote monitoring, adoption of the Federated Data Platform (FDP), and expanded NHS App functionality”.
On neighbourhood models of care, plans are to develop and expand community capacity, and primary care will be modernised. Activity will be shifted out to the community through integrated neighbourhood teams, urgent community response and virtual wards, community diagnostic and elective pathways, and a unified flow centre. Digital access and greater diagnostic capability will be focuses for primary care.
For electives and diagnostics, the ICB notes ambitions to incorporate digital pathway optimisation, increased use of remote monitoring, and strengthened digital interoperability to allow for results from Community Diagnostic Centres to flow seamlessly into primary and secondary care systems. The Care Coordination Centre will play a central role in digital transformation, it continues, by taking responsibility for this interoperability and the transfer of patients into the right services at the right time.
For long-term condition care, the focus will be on the expanded use of remote monitoring, virtual consultations, and data-driven insights, including the use of remote clinical tools like digital blood pressure monitoring to help patients self-manage at home. Across all pathways, digital solutions will support earlier intervention, improve care continuity, and reduce duplication, including digital triage and access to online information.
My NHS GP will be delivered to use AI-enabled triage and data-driven clinical pathways in primary care, whilst patients will be given a single digital space to manage all appointments, referrals, diagnostics, and communications, and ambient voice tech will be deployed to reduce admin burden and free-up clinical time. Ambient AI will also be adopted in community pharmacy, alongside “full digitisation” of pharmacy clinical services to ensure structured data flows into GP and hospital systems, increased use of electronic prescribing, digital tools for medicines optimisation, and enhanced digital safety systems including clinical decision support tools and allergy alerts.
The ICB commits to cutting-edge innovations and tools such as the use of AI and machine learning in image interpretation, pathology automation, risk stratification, and earlier detection of disease. Use of the NHS App for diagnostics will be expanded, with interoperability between diagnostic systems, primary care, and acute providers to ensure results are available in real time across the system. Digital clinical decision support tools will reportedly help improve referral quality and reduce unwarranted variation.
Technological innovation will be used to transform cancer care, with focuses including robotic-assisted surgery, AI and machine learning to increase diagnostic capacity and support faster image interpretation, and improve accuracy of cancer detection. Key enablers include the national Cancer 360 platform, digital pathology networks, remote monitoring platforms for people living with and beyond cancer, genomic decision support tools, and digital risk assessment tools.
By 2031, the ICBs outline ambitions to have expanded the Shared Care Record, integrated it with the NHS App, and deployed the FDP to provide “real-time, linked datasets across health and social care”. Data sharing arrangements will be strengthened, system analytical capability and competence will be developed, outcome dashboards and predictive analytics tools will be rolled out, and population health management tools will strengthen system-wide intelligence. Data architecture, co-designed digital solutions, automation of repetitive tasks, virtual wards, and cyber security will also be areas of focus.
Wider trend: innovation and digital transformation
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