NHS Trust Region Series: London

For this edition of our NHS trust region series, we take a deep dive into what’s happening with digital and data across the London region. We’ll explore digital strategies, plans, and priorities, pilots along with innovations, case studies, and insights from the sector.

Digital strategy, digital plans and priorities

West London NHS Trust plans £29 million digital strategy

The West London NHS Trust digital strategy for 2025 – 2030 is centred around six pillars, to cover infrastructure, cyber, systems optimisation, data and insights, AI and innovation, and empowering people. Estimated capital investment for the delivery of the digital strategy is £29 million, to be phased over five years, with “clear milestones and benefits realisation targets”. A digital PMO and programme boards will oversee each pillar. Years one and two will look to develop “strong foundations”, taking a look at existing systems, standardising workflows, establishing clear governance, and assessing digital literacy. Years two to four will focus on optimisation, with digital systems such as EPRs, data platforms, and business intelligence tools developed, digital tools introduced, workflows refined, and interoperability across systems enhanced. Longer term priorities in years four and five cover transformation at scale, system-wide interoperability, seamless digital care, and data-driven insight for proactive health management.

Royal Marsden sets out plans for digital, data, innovation, and collaboration in new strategy to 2029

The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust has shared its Digital, Data and Technology strategy to 2029, building on a “good platform for digital growth and a set of capable and effective tools” resulting from the successful delivery of its previous strategy. The trust’s roadmap for 2025/26 looks to focus on an AI framework, ambient AI pilot, digital standards and training plan, low code automation first of type, cyber awareness campaign, and administrative AI use cases. For 2026/27, the focus is NHS App integration, FDP compliance, HIMSS 7, Internet of Things capability, and integrated discovery and diagnostics. Looking ahead to the strategy end date of 2029, RM outlines plans around enhancing AI capabilities, completing the roll-out of ambient AI, regional interconnectivity and interoperability, enhanced digital standards and support capabilities, an “intrinsic” cyber awareness culture, and being a digital exemplar.

South London and Maudsley plans EPR and patient engagement portal procurement in new digital and data strategy

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has shared its upcoming digital and data strategy, along with key targets to determine its success. Plans are for an EPR to be implemented in 2027, which it hopes will enable the delivery of additional systems such as ambient voice technology. “A clear priortisation will be required to prevent double running – AI will be part of the EPR,” it notes. Core focuses of the new strategy include developing a digitally literate and skilled workforce to help maximise adoption of digital technologies, ensuring available data is leveraged for population health management and predictive analytics, and establishing a digitally integrated care model facilitating seamless coordination across services within and beyond the trust’s borders. Strengthening foundations by enhancing existing systems and simplifying current processes is another focus, with SLaM planning to review current uses of tools and processes to identify duplication and opportunities for improved efficiencies. Structured “role appropriate” training will be offered to staff to support them in using available technology more effectively, clinical systems will be aligned to clinical workflows, and systems will be integrated within the trust and with partners.

Oxleas NHS FT strategy update notes ambient AI, NHS App, data projects

The board of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust has offered an update on its trust strategy, celebrating successes to date, responding to changes in the external environment, and exploring priorities around digital to 2027. Key digital achievements to date include the roll out of digital prescribing in the community, which has resulted in more than 5,500 digital prescriptions being written. The trust’s online patient portal, Oxcare, is set to be integrated with the NHS App thanks to £500,000 in funding, said to provide enhanced functionality around patient questionnaires and appointment management, as well as reducing the administrative workload for staff. Options for neighbourhood interoperability solutions are being explored to support joined-up care.

Core infrastructure modernisation, AI and automation, AVT from London Ambulance Service

London Ambulance Service shared updates on a range of digital and data programmes underway across the trust, looking at patient outcomes, core infrastructure modernisation, AI and automation, ePCR, and ambient voice technology. A key strategic highlight offered by the board is the transition of the My Clinical Feedback digital product, co-designed by the trust to allow paramedics to receive structured feedback on patient outcomes following conveyance, into a national Federated Data Platform product. The trust has led on successful implementation across London, and will continue to act as the national reference site during national rollout in 2026/27.  Opportunities from the NHSE Frontline Productivity Programme include cyber security enhancements, the expansion of AVT, improvements to network resilience, EPR optimisation, and cloud-first infrastructure, LAS outlines. Progress is ongoing on core infrastructure modernisation, including the renewal of legacy systems supporting 999.

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children shares digital achievements and commitments to 10-Year Plan

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust has shared digital achievements around ambient voice roll out, EPR training, and AI, highlighting plans and commitments in line with the 10-Year Plan. The launch of Bedside MyChart, an inpatient portal, achieved rapid adoption, with 38 percent of inpatients engaging in the first month, saving more than 24 hours of nursing time. October 2025 also saw the implementation of the second phase of the London Care Record, reportedly enabling visibility of patients across other London trusts. The Epic Thrive programme has been delivering personalised training to more than 200 clinicians, with GOSH adding that uptake has increased by 50 percent with the introduction of the Tortus ambient voice solution now being rolled out across the trust.

The trust also unveiled a new platform designed to generate clinical intelligence from routine health data, developed in-house by its Data Research, Innovation and Virtual Environments unit. Developed using open-source languages including R and Python, the platform takes de-identified data from patient cohorts and transforms it into “a bespoke in-house common data model” developed as part of a pre-existing ETL library, that outlines clinical events like diagnoses and procedures in table format. A library of analytics functions such as frequency analysis and measures-of-association analysis, then offer clinical intelligence in response to input queries.

East London NHS Foundation Trust outlines digital progress and future digital ambitions

East London NHS Foundation Trust outlined recent digital progress and future digital ambitions in its most recent board meeting, indicating ongoing work on EPR procurement, and the role of digital in patient flow. Collaborative work is continuing with Homerton Healthcare and North East London NHS Foundation Trust on the shared use of the Rio EPR, the trust shares, with an agreement in principle to extend contracts to 31 March 2028, and teams developing a common strategic approach to future provision. A full assessment of procurement options is to be undertaken over the next year, with a final recommendation to be presented by Q3 2026.

A digital bed management tool has been implemented to grant real-time visibility of bed status, patient flow, and bottlenecks, the trust updates, with automated escalation and clearer performance metrics. Migration to a new cloud provider supporting enhanced backup and business recovery processes has been successful; an infrastructure upgrade programme is continuing; and opportunities are being explored for alignment of EPR platforms and the uptake of digital tools.

£7 million investment approved for robotic process automation, AI, data, cloud at Kingston and Richmond NHS

A £7 million investment over three years has been approved for Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust’s Digital, Data & Technology Strategy, identifying ten initiatives including robotic process automation, AI chatbots, and real-time dashboards, “with ROI estimated at 240 percent”. The trust also shares its medium term plan for 2026-31, highlighting digital transformation and digital tools. The trust lists digital as an enabler in its medium term plan for the next five years, with plans to introduce RPA and automation to reduce admin burdens, AI chatbots to support patients and staff, dynamic staff scheduling and clinical utilisation tools, and cloud and network modernisation improvements. When looking at transformation for trust and neighbourhood, plans include more virtual appointments, patient-initiated follow-up via the NHS App, digital mapping of neighbourhood frailty pathways to support digital joining-up, and integration of community and acute data for prevention and early intervention.

Rackspace: Sovereign cloud, Enterprise AI, and cyber recovery: The priorities emerging across NHS Trusts

Across NHS trusts, digital transformation continues to accelerate. Cloud adoption is advancing, AI investment is increasing, and cyber resilience is becoming more tightly linked to operational continuity and patient care. At the same time, trusts are navigating growing complexity around governance, operational control, and data security as healthcare environments become more interconnected.

From our work across healthcare and the wider public sector, we’re seeing three priorities increasingly shape NHS digital strategies:

  • Greater operational control across hybrid environments
  • Scaling AI safely while protecting patient data
  • Strengthening resilience against operational disruption and cyberattack


These trends are driving growing interest in sovereign operating models across cloud, AI and cyber recovery.

Research conducted by Coleman Parkes Research for Rackspace Technology highlights both the progress being made and the challenges organisations still face. Across NHS organisations surveyed:

  • 51 percent plan to enhance existing technologies with AI capabilities
  • 41 percent plan to invest in new AI-enabled technologies
  • 37 percent report reduced clinician workload through AI adoption


At the same time:

  • 70 percent describe technical debt as moderate to high
  • Only 20 percent are very confident in interoperability across systems
  • 44 percent identify security risks and vulnerabilities as a key concern
  • Only 12 percent describe themselves as cyber resilient


What we’re increasingly seeing across NHS trusts is that modernisation is no longer just about adopting new technologies. It is about how organisations maintain governance, resilience, and operational control as environments become more distributed and interconnected.

Sovereign healthcare cloud: Enabling modernisation with greater control

Cloud remains central to NHS digital transformation, but as trusts adopt more hybrid and multicloud environments, operational complexity can increase alongside innovation. Many organisations are now looking more closely at governance, operational accountability, and visibility across cloud environments.

From our experience working with NHS organisations, sovereign healthcare cloud is increasingly about creating environments where:

  • Sensitive healthcare data remains governed appropriately
  • Operational ownership is clearly defined
  • Hybrid infrastructure can be managed consistently
  • Critical services remain resilient and visible


The focus is not on limiting innovation. It is on enabling cloud adoption within operational models aligned to healthcare governance and resilience requirements.

Sovereign Enterprise AI: Bringing the AI to the data

AI adoption across the NHS is continuing to grow, but so are concerns around governance and operational oversight. At Rackspace Technology, we increasingly see sovereign Enterprise AI built around a simple principle:

Bring the AI to the data, not the data to the AI.

Traditional AI approaches often involve moving sensitive data into external AI platforms for processing. In healthcare, that can quickly introduce concerns around governance, visibility, and control. Sovereign Enterprise AI takes a different approach by deploying AI capabilities closer to the data itself, within governed environments where organisations maintain operational oversight.

For NHS trusts, this supports:

  • Greater control over patient data
  • Improved governance and auditability
  • Reduced operational risk
  • Greater confidence when scaling AI capabilities


Importantly, scaling AI requires more than deploying models alone. NHS organisations increasingly need support across the full AI lifecycle to:

  • Develop
  • Operate
  • Scale


Through our work with healthcare organisations and strategic partners, Rackspace Technology helps trusts develop AI solutions and then operationalise and manage those environments securely over time.

Sovereign cyber recovery cloud: Resilience for critical services

Cyber resilience is now directly connected to operational continuity across the NHS. Our research found that 44 percent of organisations lack confidence in protecting data from cyberattacks. At the same time, ransomware attacks increasingly target backup systems and recovery infrastructure directly. As a result, many trusts are placing greater focus on recovery strategies designed for modern cyber threats.

Sovereign cyber recovery cloud focuses on creating isolated and controlled recovery environments designed to help organisations:

  • Recover trusted operations more quickly
  • Restore clean environments safely
  • Improve resilience during incidents
  • Reduce dependency on compromised production systems


Sovereignty is becoming part of the NHS operational conversation

Across cloud, AI, and cyber resilience, a consistent trend is emerging across NHS trusts. Organisations are looking for ways to modernise and innovate while maintaining stronger operational control over critical services, sensitive data and increasingly complex environments. That is why sovereign healthcare cloud, sovereign Enterprise AI, and sovereign cyber recovery are becoming increasingly relevant to NHS digital strategies.

To learn more, please click here.

Insights from the London region

North London shares work to improve efficiency and eliminate non-value adding tasks using digital and AI

The board of North London NHS Foundation Trust has shared details of work to improve efficiency, reduce running costs, and eliminate non-value adding tasks with the use of digital tools and AI. Mobilising AI solutions to free-up time to care through a ten percent reduction in time spent on non-clinical activities year-on-year is noted, and increasing the use of digital skills by upskilling the workforce to reduce time spent on non-value adding tasks by five percent year-on-year. Looking to generative AI, the trust shares details of two current use cases. The first of these is Retrieval Augmented Generation Architecture, which combines search tools with generative AI to surface information from the organisation’s own data sources, and then uses a large language model to generate an answer based on retrieved content. The second is in clinical notes summarisation, taking details from the EPR and summarising patient clinical history. “Combined, these aim to improve the accuracy, safety, and usefulness of clinical summarisation within NHS workflows, reducing clinical administrative burden,” North London explains. A business case is currently in development for AVT with the aim of deploying in 2026/27.

Moorfields spin-out partners with Specsavers to harness potential of AI tech in optometry

Moorfields spin-out Cascader has announced its partnership with Specsavers focused on harnessing the potential of AI innovation to improve patient care in optometry. Peter Thomas, Moorfields’ CCIO and executive director of digital development, and Giles Edmonds, clinical services director at Specsavers, announced that the partnership is set to explore the best way of implementing cutting-edge AI capabilities into optometry in a video post shared to LinkedIn. Cascader, a spin-out from Moorfields, UCL and Topcon Health, is focused on building clinical-grade AI for ophthalmology. A mission statement from its website outlines its work to use AI “to enable safe, evidence-based decisions in high-volume, high-risk eye conditions” and to use oculomics for early detection of systemic disease.

AI pilot outcomes and future initiatives at London Ambulance Service NHS Trust

London Ambulance Service NHS Trust has shared outcomes from AI pilots including ambient voice and AI training simulation for staff, along with future ambitions for digital and data, and planned collaborations with the Southern Ambulance Services Collaboration on shared infrastructure, cyber security, and more. A one-year pilot of Tortus AI ambient voice technology is underway across LAS’s clinical hub and ambulance operations, following a successful proof of concept trial funded by the Frontline Digitisation Fund. “The initial trial, supported by a research study led by Great Ormond Street Hospital, demonstrated strong technical performance and measurable improvements in clinical communication and documentation accuracy,” it states. Pilots at locations including Croydon and Ilford are demonstrating improvements in patients per shift and on-scene to handover times. Another proof of concept is being conducted with Kaiwa’s AI training platform, an AI-powered conversational simulation tool to enhance emergency call taker training. Combining natural language processing and synthetic voice technology to simulate 999 calls, the trust reports that the tool enables trainees to “practice complex scenarios in a controlled environment”, with early positive feedback being received.

East London NHS FT data approach on patient flow and predictive analytics

East London NHS Foundation Trust has outlined its use of data in informing patient care and patient flow, deploying digital screens, interactive dashboards, and PowerBI. 22 wards across the trust now have digital screens showcasing real-time data on aspects of flow, safety, care plans, observation status, Mental Health Act status, key assessments, and expected discharge date. Co-designed with clinicians and service users, the screens update every 15 minutes, supporting safety huddles, team meetings, and handovers. An Early Warning System developed in the trust offers predictions on when wards may require additional support, with an email update sent out to all inpatient leads every week. It provides a heat map using ten measures identified by wards as being predictive for safety, covering bank usage, staff sickness, occupancy levels, and more. A PowerBI platform is also in use across ELFT to offer insight into trends and patterns in patient populations and services, giving leadership teams the opportunity to identify areas for improvement, make strategic decisions, and explore service effectiveness.

Researchers at Imperial develop AI tool designed to read ECGs for signs of heart block

A team of researchers at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust have created an AI tool designed to read ECGs and support doctors to identify those at risk of developing the potentially fatal heart condition, heart block. AIRE-CHB is an AI tool that has been developed with support from the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and funding from the British Heart Foundation. It has been trained on over 1.1 million ECG heart recordings from 190,000 patients in Boston and tested on a further 50,000 people from the UK, said to allow it to detect the earliest signs of heart block and identify patients who will encounter problems later on in life if the condition is left untreated. According to the trust, AIRE-CHB “performed much better than existing methods for predicting heart block”, with a reported 89 percent success rate. This compares to the existing standard where doctors use clues from an ECG while also following international guidelines, with 59 percent of cases identified correctly. Those who have been identified as high-risk by the AI are “about 7-12 times more likely to develop complete heart block compared to the individuals identified as low-risk”, the trust shared.

Barts Health shares data driven approach to patient safety, flow and care delivery

Barts Health has shared how a real-time data dashboard, linked to its EPR, has made an impact on patient safety, patient flow, and delivery of care. The M-BRACE project presents key information in a single place, including data relating to risk of falls, low blood sugar, and delays in assessment or transport, to support structured check-ins through the day. At 8-9am ward teams meet with support of the data, 10-12pm best practice reviews of every patient’s care take place, with check-ins 3-4pm, to review and track progress on discharges and identify any patients becoming unwell. The trust shared examples of how the number of patients receiving blood thinners (to prevent blood clots) doubled in one ward and how patients being ready for discharge increased. Barts Health is now looking to expand on the project’s success by introducing M-BRACE in other wards across the hospital.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust trials AI scanner to help reduce heart failure admissions

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust are taking part in a wider NHS study, trialling the use of AI scanners to help reduce hospital readmissions for people with heart failure, also allowing patients to manage their condition at home. Developed by the medical technology manufacturer, Heartfelt Technologies, the scanner is an at-home device that takes “thousands of detailed images” of patients as they get in and out of bed. Said to detect the build-up of fluid in their legs, a known cause of swelling called oedema, the trust notes is “a sign that their heart failure is getting worse”. If the scanner does detect this type of swelling, it then sends an alert to the trust’s cardiology team, after which a heart failure nurse contacts the patient for further assessment. Some patients are given the opportunity to use the AI scanner for up to six months at home, with others given their usual care to give researchers a clearer picture of how well the device is working when it comes to reducing hospital admissions.

Royal Free Hospital and North Middlesex University Hospital highlight use of AI contouring tool

The Royal Free Hospital and North Middlesex University Hospital have shared how the use of an AI contouring tool has helped to reduce time spent on manual processes and repetitive tasks within their radiography department. The AI software is being used to automate contouring within radiotherapy, replacing a manual process to outline specific areas within the body and the organs at risk. The system has been in use in North Middlesex for the past three years, where it has reportedly seen a 60 percent reduction in time spent on contouring organs at risk and has saved 3.5 hours a week in breast treatment alone. It was introduced to RFH over the summer, with hopes that it will help to reduce manual workloads and increase turnaround times for treatment planning. According to the Royal Free Hospital, the AI system was trained on large datasets and “uses advanced algorithms to automatically generate accurate contours based on medical imaging data”. Further audits have been planned for both organisations, so they continue to review how AI could be used to support other innovation and help “shape the future of cancer treatment”.

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