Digitising the frontline
Making the best use of Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems to support the delivery of efficient, effective and safe care.
NHS England’s Frontline Digitisation Programme is laying the foundations for digital transformation across health and care.
£1.9 billion has been invested to ensure all NHS trusts achieve a baseline level of digital capability. The current phase of this investment is supporting an extensive roll-out of electronic patient records (EPRs) across the NHS. It is expected that 96% of trusts will have implemented or upgraded an EPR by March 2026, and the final 4% will be delivering their plans to do so.
Following this milestone, the focus will be on maximising the impact and usability of EPRs, as well as laying foundations to reach the government’s aspiration for a single patient record.
Why invest in EPRs?
An EPR is a digital version of a patient’s hospital record, including information such as diagnoses, treatments, medications, and test results. It allows authorised healthcare providers to access and update patient information quickly and securely.
Fundamentally, there are huge benefits to moving away from paper patient records to a digital system – from reducing errors caused by illegible handwriting, to enhancing data security with encryption and access controls, and enabling secure sharing of information with the right clinicians at the right time.
EPRs also provide the foundation for connecting patient records across multiple healthcare organisations. Many trusts work together to deploy joint EPRs, such as One Devon, so they can share patient records across the region.
In addition, EPRs set the digital foundations to harness the power of data and support further technological advancements, such as ambient voice technology (AVT), that can help clinical teams.
Benefits of EPRs
- Health and care teams – EPRs enable sharing of vital information to support the delivery of care without adding burden to staff.
- Patients – EPRs contribute to an improved, safer experience of care, more convenient access to care, and provide the digital foundations for new tools (such as patient apps) that allow patients to manage their health and wellbeing needs.
- The NHS – quality and efficiency gains from EPRs are projected to free up billions of pounds and staff hours for the NHS.
Areas of focus for 2025 to 2026
- EPR optimisation – work to improve EPR functionality, efficiency and usability will continue to be a significant focus.
- Digital maturity assessments (DMA) – NHS England will continue to conduct digital maturity assessments across the NHS based on the seven success measures from the What Good Looks Like framework. These assessments support local systems and trusts to baseline their level of digital maturity and to prioritise and plan local digital investment.
- Frontline Digitisation Support Offer (FDSO) – the FDSO was set up when the programme first launched and continues to offer EPR support, including best practice guidance. New for 2025 to 2026, the offer now includes a tiger team service. This is a cross-functional private sector team available to offer trusts rapid on-site support at critical points of their EPR journey. The team is also focusing on understanding how EPR deployments affect productivity. This will inform practical guidance to help other trusts deploy EPRs successfully and move more quickly from implementation to benefits realisation.
- Preparing to provide future support – following our EPR milestone in March 2026, our focus will be on ensuring that digital systems are used to best effect to support frontline staff to deliver the care patients need. Findings from the 2024 NHS England EPR Usability Survey are supporting our preparation for this work.
Related work
National strategy
Following publication of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England, and the Treasury spending review (SR25) providing a record funding settlement to support its implementation, NHS England is charged with enabling the transformation of the NHS. This will involve taking advantage of the many benefits of digital, data and technology, and will be a fundamental enabler for the plan’s three shifts to healthcare:
- hospital to community
- analogue to digital
- sickness to prevention
Digital infrastructure at integrated care system level
Wider use of EPRs will also support digital maturity at an integrated care system (ICS) level, which will improve the patient experience as they move between local NHS organisations and increase service efficiency. The Integrated care systems: design framework sets out a much broader requirement for ICSs to consolidate their digital infrastructure. NHS England is working to support ICSs to enable integrated care through the consolidation and convergence of their digital infrastructures where appropriate. By simplifying the current complex digital landscape, we can take further steps to ensure all citizens and professionals involved in the care of an individual have appropriate access to the right information at the right time to provide care.
Digital Social Care Records (DSCRs)
The Digitising Social Care Programme supports the digital transformation of the adult social care sector. Currently, 80% of the approximately 18,000 providers of adult social care use Digital Social Care Records (DSCRs), with over 90% of care recipients covered by a DSCR – up from less than 40% in 2022.
To support long-term sustainability of this digital transformation, the team worked with a range of stakeholders to develop a set of sector data standards. They also manage a list of assured DSCR solutions that meet a set of core and functional capabilities. All DSCR-assured solutions now integrate with GP Connect, a first step in improving access to health data.
A self-assessment tool is available for care providers to assess and review their organisation against the Digital working in adult social care: What Good Looks Like guidance.
Having built important digital foundations in the adult social care sector, our priorities now are:
- joining up data and ensuring greater integration between health and care services to support improved decision-making and staff productivity, as well as reducing delays to hospital discharge
- supporting the adoption of care technologies that help people to live independently and prevent escalation of health and care needs
- ensuring that the remaining care providers, and those with legacy systems, have a standards-compliant DSCR
For more information, contact england.adultsocialcare@nhs.net
Connecting Care Records (ConCR)
NHS England will have invested £20 million to connect care records by March 2026.
A shared care record is a safe and secure way of bringing electronic records from different health and care organisations together digitally in one place. It joins up information based on the individual rather than the organisation, aligning strategically with the NHS Long Term Plan and 10 Year Health Plan.
Each integrated care board (ICB) has a shared care record which is used across the ICB and in some areas across ICB boundaries.
Throughout 2025 and 2026, the ConCR Programme is working with health and care teams to provide access to shared care records across England through the use of interoperability tools such as the National Record Locator Service. More information is available here: NHS England » Connecting Care Records Programme.
Case studies
Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
The trust used their EPR as a foundation to make a range of digital improvements whilst being supported by NHS England’s Global Digital Exemplar programme.
They replaced hand written whiteboards with touchscreen devices, showing clear up to the minute information about patients and the ward. The devices link directly to the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) to show critical patients care needs and connects to the e-observation system so staff can be alerted if a patient has missed a regular observation when on unescorted leave.
The trust also introduced SHaRON (which stands for Support, Hope and Recovery Online) a secure, clinically-moderated, social, therapeutic network which links up patients, carers and clinicians in a ‘social media’ style format. Patients and their families can use SHaRON as a confidential space and to access 24/7 support for conditions such as eating disorders, perinatal mental health, and child and adolescent mental health.
Eighty per cent of patients using SHaRON said it aided their recovery and readmission of patients to the emergency department is less than 10 percent, compared to a 30 to 50 per cent national average.
The full case study is available through the national archive.
Implementing an EPR at Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
In July 2022 Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Northern services went live with their new electronic patient record, the same system that went live across their Eastern services (formerly RD&E) in 2020.
In the first month of use, the Northern services used the EPR to:
- register 105 baby births
- record 12,333 visits to patients’ homes
- admit 2,881 patients to hospital
- discharge 2,931 patients from hospital
- book 28,888 outpatient appointments
The EPR is helping the Trust offer patients of their Northern and Eastern services more visibility and control of much of their care, and the Trust currently has around 50,000 patients who have used the MY CARE app on their phones, tablets or PCs.
South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust
The trust’s integrated electronic patient record (EPR) system means staff can access and update records in real-time, prescribe medication and record vital signs from the bedside using scanning technology and digital patient wristbands.
Electronic rule-based treatment plans increase consistency, reduce clinical risk, shorten length of hospital stay and positively impact on mortality and patient outcomes.
Clinical and admin staff time is saved so it can be directed to direct patient care.
The trust is securely sharing electronic information with health and care partners via the Great North Care Record (GNCR), meaning vital patient information is available to other healthcare settings across the region.
For more information on South Tyneside and Sunderland’s work read the full case study through the national archive.
Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (LSCFT)
The mental health and community trust introduced a new Electronic Patient Record (EPR) in a staggered roll-out between 2018 and 2021 and has made a number of digital improvements for both their patients and staff.
The trust adopted a new advice and guidance system that allows GPs to raise a query digitally through a patient’s EPR to the consultant psychiatrist team. A consultant psychiatrist can then directly provide the GP with clinical advice.
The functionality reduces the number of traditional referrals to mental health (MH) services. Using this new channel, for some patients all they need to do is see their GP who will message the psychiatrist who will then message back within a few days recommending appropriate treatment. This means quicker care and fewer repeat appointments.
For more information on Lancashire and South Cumbria’s work read the full case study.
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
A specialist paediatric trust, Alder Hey has made changes to improve patient safety, staff experience and has used innovative technology to improve their young patients’ experience of going to hospital.
The trust introduced “closed loop technology” – that scans the barcode on a patient’s wristband – and then verifies this against the medication being given to ensure the right person is getting the right drug. This safety measure has seen a 50% reduction in error since it was introduced. Alder Hey has also produced its own ‘Symptom Checker’ which is used by families to check a child’s symptoms to then in turn be directed to the most appropriate service, as well as tailored advice and guidance from Alder Hey clinicians.
The reliance on data and analytics for our clinical and operational services at Alder Hey has never been greater. The use of data has increased dramatically over the past two years in line with the pandemic and great strides have been taken in ensuring clinical outcomes and population health management are data driven.
As we continue to deliver the Digital and Data Futures Strategy, key upcoming projects include the delivery of a bespoke patient portal for children and families to engage with, implementation of a new analytics portal, a successful electronic patient record upgrade and continued improvement around our technical infrastructure.
For more information on Alder Hey’s work read the full case study.