Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has shared plans for outpatient and diagnostic transformation, remote care, and digital innovation in its latest trust strategy to 2031, aiming to reshape the way care is delivered, optimise existing digital systems, and embrace new digital opportunities.
Focuses will be on empowering patients and appointment management, reducing unnecessary admissions, and workforce and training development, the trust states. Priority programmes include paperless systems, digital triage, and ambient voice technology, which it hopes will support the shift of care from hospital to community. Pathways will be digital by default where appropriate, it continues, to improve access, reduce delays, and release time for patient care.
Virtual wards and hospital at home models will be central to admission avoidance and safe discharge, according to MTW, featuring remote physiological monitoring, digital symptom tracking, and senior clinical oversight. By 2031, senior clinical decision making will be available earlier in patient pathways; digital innovations including AVT will support productivity, flow, and workforce wellbeing; and diagnostic pathways will be simplified and connected.
The trust also looks to position itself as a regional leader in digitally enabled surgical care, expanding triage to test models, diagnostics with clinical decision support, putting in place patient-initiated follow-up, expanding virtual wards and virtual surgical pathways, and ensuring integrated community-based services supported by digital integration.
Plotting out future activities for each domain on a five-year timeline, the trust shares ambitions for surgery, to pilot digital pre-assessment for endoscopy and map current surgical and diagnostic pathways in 2026/27. In 2027/28, the focus will be to launch AI-assisted triage and virtual outpatient consultations, and expand robotic-assisted surgery. Digital pre-assessment will be scaled across all endoscopy services in 2028/29, with AI tools expanded to inpatient pathways for predictive discharge and bed management, and robotic-assisted surgery capacity further increased.
In 2029/30, MTW commits to optimise AI and digital workflows based on feedback and available data, standardise integrated surgical care pathways, and evaluate and refine demand management initiatives. Finally, over the 2030/31 period, it plans for “full-scale deployment” of AI-driven workflows, the evaluation of robotic surgery pathways, and the identification of next-wave digital innovations such as AI in imaging and predictive surgery scheduling.
Digital triage also plays a role in five-year plans for medicine and emergency care, and women’s, children’s, and sexual health. Requirements for a maternity information system will be defined in 2026/27, ready to begin phased roll out with interface testing in 2027/28, the trust states, and full deployment set for 2028/29.
Wider trend: Future care
The publication of Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust’s plan for better care has acknowledged progress to date for digital first and AI, with metrics on current use of digital tools and systems such as MyCare, Copilot, and Epic. The trust went live with its Epic EPR in April, integrating “hundreds” of systems previously in use across the the trust into a single electronic system, and introducing the MyCare patient portal to offer patients visibility of medical information, clinical interactions, and appointment details. Go-live marked a step toward realising the ambitions of the One Devon EPR programme.
North West London Acute Provider Group has shared an update on its digital and data plans for 2026/27, noting efforts to improve data sharing and reshape strategic objectives to focus on patient and staff experiences with technology, AI, automation, EPR, and the federated data platform. Work is continuing toward the digitisation of paper-based records, sharing data, and providing patients with direct access to their information, the group notes, whilst strategic objectives have been revised with a focus on the experiences of patients and staff when interacting with services and technology. It observes a transition from project-led delivery to a more integrated digital portfolio aligned with group strategy, and a need for enhanced portfolio assurance, financial visibility, and dependency mapping.
The board of Clatterbridge Cancer Centre has discussed its current position and future plans on digital systems, data, and digital workforce capability and training. Current priorities include its patient portal and NHS App for patients, and ambient voice technology (AVT) and Copilot for staff, the board highlights, with a new digital strategy in development for 2026-31. Pursuing AVT at scale is reliant on clinical capacity for pathway redesign, as well as operational ownership and the completion of clinical safety controls, it continues. An operational working group has been established to oversee engagement and implementation, and a deployment plan and associated metrics have been agreed.
