Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has shared plans to redesign care pathways, transform care, and realise efficiency and productivity improvements with the use of AI, automation, and digital tools.
In its five-year strategy to 2031, the trust commits to innovation, transformation, and system reinvestment in proactive, multidisciplinary neighbourhood healthcare, delivering on the three shifts outlined in the 10-Year Plan, improving access to primary care, and improving outcomes for local communities.
A trust productivity and efficiency programme has been initiated, with an initial income and expenditure planning gap of £15 million for 2026/27, and a two percent annual productivity growth requirement in tariff, it notes. A leadership group is reportedly scoping priorities in line with required benefits to deliver financial sustainability over three-to-five years.
AI ambient documentation and electronic record integration, as well as process automation including referrals, is hoped to support productivity and efficiency improvements, increase clinical capacity, and reduce administrative costs, Berkshire Healthcare considers.
The trust looks to its patient experience portal to support appointment management, patient communication, and integration with the NHS App. It plans for information systems to be integrated with health and care partners and a focus placed on developing health analytics capabilities for population health insights. Opportunities will also be explored around hosting a connected care platform and population health analytics functions on behalf of the ICB, the trust continues.
Elsewhere, a programme of service redesign is being developed, with ambitions for community health services transformation. An initial emphasis will be the MSK physio pathway, with service delivery to be “reimagined with the help of digital tools”.
The trust also reflects on digital strategy delivery as the strategy period comes to an end, highlighting that 225,000 patient interactions have now involved the use of digital elements in delivery of care, and 492,000 hours of clinical and admin time have been saved through digital efficiencies in the last three years. “We have 24 robots managing 66 processes across 38 services saving over 55k staff hours,” it states. “All of the digital teams are focusing on delivery of productivity improvements and use of technology as part of our interaction with patients in-line with the ambitions in the Trusts Strategic Plan.”
Key ongoing projects cover voluntary and charity sector partners receiving referrals from and providing information back to the trust EPR, increasing integration with EPR for clinical digital documentation, shared care records, ambient voice technologies, and primary care referrals, and intelligent automations with smart referrals to free up operational time.
Three areas are identified as being at risk for delivery, including community scheduling, which the trust reveals has been suspended “due to limited availability of products in the market”; medicines management; and early adoption of the new digital staff solution.
An AI and ambient clinical recording business case is in development to inform procurement and roll out, referral automation for Talking Therapies is due to go live, and there are plans to use existing patient engagement tools and to procure a class 2 medical device service to deliver digital triage and patient treatment for MSK. NHS App integration for community services will be completed, and staff will be supported with a digital skills training pathway encompassing 52 courses from basic essentials to advanced, the trust updates.
Wider trend: Digitally transforming care pathways
NHS England has published its sepsis modern service framework, putting forward a digital roadmap with recommendations and timelines for digital infrastructure including the single patient record, the Federated Data Platform, EPRs, machine learning, AI, wearables, and digital diagnostics. The framework outlines how the NHS will work to improve sepsis care over the next ten years, focusing-in on priority actions, and helping to inform those involved in planning and commissioning services for those with, or at risk of, sepsis. The ambition is to “reduce death, life-threatening complications and long-term impact from sepsis and severe infection in all patient groups by at least 25 percent by 2035”, NHSE shares.
Humber and North Yorkshire Collaboration of Acute Providers annual report for 2025/26 has shared achievements across imaging, diagnostics and order comms, with discussion on next steps and the future of acute care in the region. Focuses for 2025/26 included reducing unwarranted variation and improving timely imaging and reporting through the development of standardised pathways, the collaboration outlines. Procurement has been completed for an order comms solution to support GPs to request imaging tests electronically, along with a shared history and reporting extension to the radiology information system to enable clinicians to view patient imaging completed elsewhere in the network.
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust has procured an end-to-end digital histopathology pathway service with integrated AI diagnostic support and NHS reporting services. The contract, worth £275k, has been awarded to Inify Laboratories Ltd following completion of the Most Suitable Provider Process, for its fully integrated diagnostic service enabling information sharing and multidisciplinary collaboration. According to University Hospitals Plymouth, the digitally enabled model is hoped to support long-term service continuity and robust governance.
