In its latest annual report on digital, Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust has highlighted benefits and outcomes from digital initiatives such as the migration of over 300 servers and systems to new data centres, the implementation of new software for mental health documentation, and a pilot of ambient voice technology.
Abigail Harrison, chief digital, infrastructure, and improvement officer, spoke of the “vital contribution” of digital, data, and technology to quality and safety of care in Lancashire and South Cumbria. Thanking colleagues across the trust for their participation, she said: “I hope this report provides assurance on the work delivered during 2025/26 and confidence in the direction of travel as we continue to strengthen our digital foundations and enable transformation that matters to patients, service users and staff.”
A focus on benefits realisation has seen the appointment of a head of data insights and an insight and evaluation lead, LSCFT notes. Altogether, it identifies £1.7 million in recurrent savings from efficiency initiatives across contracts, technology, and assets.
The migration of over 300 servers and systems to new data centres and work on the Microsoft Fabric Data Lakehouse migration has reduced standard reporting times from between 48 and 72 hours, to a maximum of 24 hours, the trust explains. It shares that migrating the trust’s legacy on-premises data warehouse to a cloud-based data management platform has paved the way for enhanced analytics, smarter reporting, improved accessibility, and faster data processing and reporting for timely decision making. The platform is “scalable by design”, it states, and is intended to support more informed decisions, as well as improved productivity, quality, and experience across services.
Its Rio ReCHARGED initiative has reduced core mental health documentation from 15 forms to five, with modelling identifying approximately 26,700 clinical hours released annually across home based treatment and inpatient services, according to LSCFT. The Rio virtual assistant and NHS App integration are helping to improve patient access, and overall the programme is delivering clinically-led optimisation of the trust’s core EPR, with improvements such as printable forms and letters, updates to the perinatal core assessment, and a new patient flow form. A series of listening events have demonstrated impact in reducing waste and duplication, it continues, and feedback is informing the next phase of Rio optimisation.
A partnership with the Lister Alliance is using Water Meadow View, a purpose-built mental health facility, as a living lab to test innovative technologies like wearable tech in monitoring up to 19 vital parameters in real time, sensors in monitoring vital signs and giving PoC scores, and CCTV with AI to detect and predict behaviours. Further technologies remain in implementation or clinical scoping, the trust says, with the programme offering a practical environment to evaluate digital technology to inform wider deployment.
Insights into trust AI and automation programmes are also shared, with the trust highlighting continued work to develop its approach to AVT, and an evaluation “informing a move towards a competitive procurement” for a wider range of clinical use cases. An updated business case focused on medical and medical secretary workflows is planned for the finance and investment group in November 2026, with a target date for procurement completion of March 2027, and a community physical health pilot planned to launch shortly afterward. A Heidi pilot has seen 78 percent of staff reporting an improvement in wellbeing, and a 45 percent reduction in time spent on clinical admin outside of working hours, it adds.
The trust has also been piloting robotic process automation and workflow automation to reduce repetitive and administrative tasks, and has been using Microsoft Copilot to support administrative productivity in drafting, summarisation, meeting notes, and basic analysis. This followed a phased roll out with priority staff groups to ensure adoption was aligned with service need, it states. A digital referral pathway has been introduced in Talking Therapies to enable patient access to support online and offer more detailed information at the point of referral.
The deployment of EMIS has continued across community physical health services, according to LSCFT, with phase three completed in June 2026 and phase four scheduled for delivery by March 2027. Optimisation activities are ongoing to support services in safely adapting to new ways of working. Electronic prescribing went live at the end of 2025, with the trust reporting improved safety, efficiency, and patient experience.
Other areas of digital development include the eMental Health Act, with the Thalamos platform procured and the project to launch in November 2026; an investment case also scheduled for November on Nervecentre therapeutic observations in inpatient units; and work as an early adopter of Rio Evo. Following its migration from legacy telephony to Cisco Webex and contact centre go-live in August, the trust further shares that it is scoping AI capabilities such as an AI assistant, AI agents, and call sentiment analysis.
In cyber security, patching compliance reached 95 percent with the trust commenting on strengthened defences as a result of enhanced security tooling, proactive threat monitoring, and infrastructure hardening. Devices across the trust now support multi-factor authentication methods like facial recognition, fingerprint, and PIN. Successful migration of over 8,000 devices to Windows 11, and of 70 percent of trust devices (5,600) to a Microsoft cloud-native model, is also credited with strengthening digital foundations.
Digital drivers, it continues, cover digital training, digital champions, interoperability, access to data, the prioritisation of cloud-based solutions, the adoption of agile methods, and the use of a platform to promote the sharing and exploration of new digital ideas. 1,224 staff were trained directly by a digital trainer in 2025/26, with 1,869 staff benefiting from digital training via e-learning, and 357 instructor-led sessions delivered. Rapid process improvement workshops (RPIWs) have seen digital teams working alongside improvement colleagues and operational services to redesign processes and digital initiatives like identity and access management.
The involvement of digital teams in RPIWs has helped to ensure that data, reporting, and system considerations are built into service redesign discussions from the outset, the trust states, and across all workshops digital staff have contributed skills in process mapping, data flows, system feasibility, automation opportunities, and governance. “Collectively, the RPIW activity during 2025/26 strengthened relationships between digital, improvement and operational teams, increased confidence in co design approaches, and embedded a culture of continuous improvement where digital change is an enabler not a bottleneck to service improvement,” it goes on. “The learning from this year has also helped shape future plans to further up-skill digital colleagues so that digital and improvement teams can co lead RPIWs as a matter of course rather than exception.”
Looking ahead, the trust vows to horizon scan and review emerging technologies for opportunities to improve digital access and triage to its services, including with the Rio virtual assistant for ePROMs, appointment management, and waiting list validation. Predictive analytics will be enhanced, decision support tools will be deployed, and machine learning will be used to identify patterns and manage population health. Robotic process automation will be explored for its benefits in automating high-volume tasks, and ambient dictation and Microsoft Copilot will be used to improve productivity, it reports.
Wider trend: Trust digital transformation
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust has launched its people strategy to 2031 noting digital, data, and automation as a key enabler in reshaping how care and work are delivered, committing to keeping people “at the heart” of rapid change. Maximising human judgment and oversight will be essential to enable people and technology to create value together, the trust states. A focus will be on addressing the barriers that “make work harder than it needs to be”.
South East Coast Ambulance (SECAmb) Service NHS Foundation Trust has presented findings from its “PARA-AI” project exploring attitudes toward AI in pre-hospital care, finding strong support for AI use in clinical care with the appropriate safeguards. Findings from the ten month mixed-methods study were shared during SECAmb’s clinical research summit, by paramedics Nicola Buchan, Jay Garland and Jack Green. 171 survey responses were received, the team noted, complemented by 14 in-depth interviews with SECAmb paramedics.
A ten-year EPR contract has been awarded to The Access Group by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The contract, worth an estimated £11.9 million, will run from November 2026 to November 2036. It was reportedly awarded via the NHS LPP clinical digital health solutions framework agreement. The trust shared plans to procure an EPR system for implementation in 2027 as part of its digital and data strategy late last year. At that time, it spoke of hopes that the system would enable the delivery of additional systems such as ambient voice technology. “A clear prioritisation will be required to prevent double running – AI will be part of the EPR,” it noted.
