We’re delighted to present our finalists for the category of “Partnership of the year”.
Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust and Imprivata: Building on successful ePMA digital transformation, improving security and efficiency with Imprivata solutions and Managed Services
Overview: Imprivata Managed Services worked with Dartford and Gravesham Trust to enable a successful ePMA digital transformation through the implementation of single sign-on, improving security and efficiency. The project team of IT specialists and clinicians adopted a structured, partnership approach.
What happened? The catalyst for the project with Imprivata was the planned implementation of the ePMA programme. Imprivata Enterprise Access Management (EAM) with single sign-on (tap and go/SSO) provided rapid access to computers via proximity card readers, streamlining logins for clinicians. Top priority was placed on gaining an early understanding of each of the departmental challenges in the current workflows, including where, when, and how logins are used and by whom. Partnership working was used to gather feedback, create a proof of concept, and gain approval of the ‘blueprint’ before the final build and go live. Rollout of the solution was achieved within the six-month target. It resulted in over 93 percent successful enrolment for staff across the organisation, 97 percent of staff using proximity card to login, improved user experience for clinicians and administration staff, and time saved from streamlined workflows put back into providing patient care. The number of applications profiled to work with Imprivata has grown, with 295,000 SSO events per month when the solution went live, to 900,000 in November 2025. Enrolment workshops were held the week before going live to get users up and running.
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust: Interweave: Scaling a sustainable, NHS-owned Shared Care Record ecosystem
Overview: Originating from the Yorkshire & Humber Care Record, Interweave has grown to include LLR, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Dorset ICSs. As an open-standard, NHS-owned asset, this partnership connects over 10 million citizens and serves as a blueprint for the national Single Patient Record programme.
What happened? The partnership abandoned traditional “monolithic data warehouse” thinking in favour of an agile, federation-first model. Using open HL7 FHIR APIs, Developments from one ICS are shared across the entire partnership, maximising return on investment. The Interweave Exchange integrates directly into EPR systems. It surfaces real-time acute encounters, GP records, mental health crises, and social care assessments naturally within frontline workflows. The partnership is driven by collective innovation. For instance, the LLR team successfully pioneered patient portal functionalities and integrated appointment data directly from University Hospitals Leicester into the NHS App by reusing Interweave’s baseline infrastructure. Similarly, Nottinghamshire recently integrated General Practice Repository for Clinical Care (GPRCC) data to drastically enhance primary care insight across their shared record. Interweave now supports a combined population footprint of over 6 million citizens, bridging acute, community, primary, and social care. In fast-paced environments like EDs, clinicians save 20 to 30 minutes per complex patient encounter by instantly viewing unified care records rather than chasing data via telephone.
The International 3D Telemedicine Partnership: Transforming remote access to specialist reconstructive care
Overview: An NHS–Microsoft–Ghana partnership developed and validated a 3D telemedicine platform. Following randomised trial evidence in Scotland, Microsoft open-sourced the technology to support adoption in low-resource settings, with Ghana Ministry of Health backing and local industry partnership.
What happened? Together, the partnership developed a clinically deployed 3D telemedicine platform. Unlike standard video consultation, the system creates a live interactive 360-degree 3D model of the patient. This enables clinicians to visualise anatomy from multiple angles, interact naturally in real time, annotate directly onto the patient’s own 3D model, explain procedures visually thereby providing a “personalised medicine” approach to surgical discussions, and improve shared decision-making. An 80-patient randomised clinical trial compared 3D with 2D telemedicine, demonstrating statistically significant superiority of 3D telemedicine across realism and presence, telehealth usability, reduced cognitive effort, and improved patient satisfaction. Initial deployment within-country focused on fixed-site 3D telemedicine hubs linking regional centres to Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. The team subsequently developed a mobile Holoportation solution within a telemedicine van, bringing immersive specialist consultation directly to remote communities. The platform enables remote specialist consultation, multidisciplinary decision-making, surgical planning, postoperative review, and outreach to underserved populations.
NHS North East London ICB, UCLPartners, and Health Navigator: AI for urgent and emergency care prevention
Overview: AI for urgent and emergency care is an NHS England-supported collaboration between UCLPartners, NHS North East London ICB and Health Navigator. The programme uses AI to identify people at higher risk of unplanned emergency care and offers them personalised, phone-based clinical coaching to prevent crises before they occur.
What happened? In 2024, NEL ICB, UCLPartners, and Health Navigator secured £13.5 million from NHS England to deliver a three-year AI for UEC prevention programme. Together, these partners have built and delivered a programme that uses AI and routinely collected hospital data to identify people at high risk of unplanned hospital use—specifically those likely to experience three or more unplanned bed days within the next six months. Once identified, individuals are offered personalised, phone-based clinical coaching to support self-management, prevent crises, and reduce reliance on urgent and emergency services. A key enabler of this collaboration has been NEL ICB’s Secure Data Environment (SDE), which supports safe, governed data sharing between NHS organisations and Health Navigator. A phased approach was agreed, beginning in Waltham Forest and progressively expanding across all seven boroughs. Central to the programme is the co-development of borough-specific AI algorithms using local hospital data. More than 5,000 patients have received or are receiving coaching, with many reporting improved confidence, better self-management, and reduced need for urgent care.
Kensa Health: Using data to shift urgent care closer to home for frail patients in East Kent
Overview: Kensa Health supported East Kent partners to use linked patient data to improve urgent care pathways for frail patients. Teams identified a frailty proxy cohort, strengthened alternatives to hospital attendance and monitored impact, supporting care closer to home and reducing admissions, bed days and system pressure.
What happened? Health Insights brought together anonymised patient journey data covering A&E attendances, hospital admissions, outpatient activity, discharges, community inpatient activity and wider population trends. The work focused on an agreed frailty proxy cohort, using criteria such as age, diagnosis and patterns of health service use. The key pathway change came in November 2023, when East Kent improved access to Hospital at Home through a Single Point of Access, or SPOA. Rather than frail patients defaulting into hospital attendance, ambulance, community, acute, primary care and ICB partners had a shared route to identify appropriate alternatives. Statistical Process Control charts tracked admissions for the frailty proxy cohort and helped distinguish meaningful change from normal variation. The team compared actual admissions after 6 November 2023 with the expected trend had the initiative not been introduced. The analysis indicated a reduction of around 16 admissions per week on average for the frailty proxy cohort. The same methodology showed a reduction of around 100 bed days per week, equivalent to 14 beds. At £350 per bed day, the non-cash releasing equivalent is approximately £1.8m per year.
Cogniss: Building for the 51 percent: Cogniss and NHS innovation partners unite to accelerate women’s digital health
Overview: Cogniss partnered with NHS innovation, technology and adoption organisations to address women’s digital health. Together, the partners are supporting 26 innovations tackling women’s health challenges, helping clinicians and founders build technology, prepare for pilots and move solutions closer to improving women’s lives.
What happened? The partnership includes Cogniss, the Health Innovation Network, Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber, Health Innovation East, other Health Innovation Network members across England, the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, the NHS Innovation Accelerator, NIHR Devices for Dignity, Amazon Web Services and techUK. Cogniss provides the no-code platform that enables healthcare experts to build patient-facing therapeutic and support apps without traditional software development teams. The Health Innovation Network and partner organisations bring expertise in evidence generation, evaluation, health economics, pilot planning and adoption. Health Innovation East supports real-world NHS testing through Innovator Landing Zones. Sistacare, led by Shanet Lewis at Lambeth Public Health, will create a digital self-assessment tool to address under-diagnosis and delayed treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding disorders. Jali Titi, led by Dr Fiona Okonjo, will develop an inclusive, multilingual breast health app to help Black women understand breast changes across all life stages. 26 innovations that may otherwise have stalled now have a credible route towards real-world implementation.
