Croydon Health Services NHS Trust has utilised a virtual work in ITU, improved discharge summaries, optimised its EPR and refreshed core infrastructure, its board discussed this month.
The trust highlighted ambitions to identify and digitise paper-based processes, to make the best use of existing digital solutions, and to identify new tech or suppliers that can help transform services. It notes progress with short and medium-term planning for digital investment, including reinvestment in RPA in ITU services and the procurement of AVT in outpatients and ED. Improvements to core EPRs have enabled better patient discharge workflows, including the introduction of the Manchester triage workflow, and the roll out of a mobile working solution for community staff, the trust adds.
A refresh of a “considerable proportion” of core infrastructure was completed over 2025/26, the board shares, “recognising the growth in the use of technology, and the ever-expanding amount of data, such as clinical documents or images that need to be stored, accessible and backed up”. Upgrades have been made to the trust’s PACS system, along with the solution used by GPs to make referrals to the trust for tests or images, and the system used across Southwest London for virtual wards.
A £7 million unified technology fund programme offered investment in core systems for clinical teams, according to Croydon Health Services. This enabled an upgrade to maternity EPR, allowing the service to meet national standards such as the Maternity Early Warning Scores in supporting early detection of illness, sending and receiving of referrals digitally, and sending consistent discharge summaries to GPs and other community services. The introduction of the latest version of the national Maternity Services Data Set has improved information availability for staff, as well as strengthening compliance from 30 to 90 percent, the trust adds.
A new AI oversight group has been introduced to ensure understanding of emerging technologies, with a pipeline of solutions in development to take advantage of those that could help staff provide safer and more efficient care, or offer the ability to automate day-to-day admin tasks for corporate teams, the trust states. A successful project has been the installation of a virtual worker in ITU, to take over where it had previously taken a member of staff half an hour per patient to copy data from a standalone system into EPR.
Looking ahead to 2026/27, Croydon Health Services outlines ambitions to implement AVT into ED and outpatient services as part of a Southwest London-wide programme, with a successful procurement having been completed to ensure clinical, operational, digital, security, and financial leads could help select the right solution for all four trusts in the region.
Wider trend: Harnessing emerging technologies for future care
For a recent session focusing on AI in healthcare, HTN was joined by an expert panel including Simon Brown, head of digital at Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Wahida Jabarzai, clinical AI and automation delivery lead at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire and University Hospitals of Leicester; and Julian Wiggins, healthcare solution director at Rackspace Technology. Our panel considered the wider challenge of AI adoption, looking at what makes a successful deployment, introducing AI safely and sustainably at scale, and some of the use cases currently delivering value across their organisations.
Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has marked progress and ambitions around AI, EPR, robotics, and digital innovation in its latest trust strategy to 2031. The trust reports having made “significant advancements” in the use of digital technologies to improve patient care, highlighting its EPR roll out, and the roll out of robotic surgery in areas including colorectal, gynaecology, upper gastrointestinal, and general surgery. The use of AI triage and clinical prioritisation in areas such as dermatology and imaging is improving access for patients and freeing-up clinician time to focus on cases requiring further investigation, it shares. An AI steering group with Royal Surrey is also reportedly supporting collaboration around technological innovation and the use of AI in digital services.
A series of plans and commitments have been set out across digital delivery, digitally-enabled primary care, and digital triage by the board of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. A delivery plan for 2026/27 promises “better use of digital and virtual tools”, a focus on digital innovation and infrastructure, and a digital-first approach to support the delivery of care closer to home. Digital access will become simpler and more joined-up, GGC states, with digital contact routes, digital records, voice tech, and Copilot-enabled productivity hoped to support improved access for patients and better information availability for staff. A sustainable blueprint is to be developed focused on delivering services in “the most optimum way”, taking a digital/virtual-first approach with an ambition of reducing costs by around five percent.
