We reached out to Mid and South Essex (MSE) ICS, who shared with us some of the system’s main digital priorities around building stronger digital foundations, enhancing system integration, empowering residents, leveraging business intelligence, and driving innovation. “We are improving cybersecurity, ensuring interoperability, and delivering our new unified electronic patient record (EPR) to standardise systems and simplify our digital estate,” MSE shared, “and we are expanding data sharing across health and social care through our Shared Care Record, with a key focus on moving from a ‘view to do’ approach— enabling professionals to act within systems, streamlining workflows, and improving care coordination.”
Other priorities include improving digital inclusion and supporting patient access to health tools such as the NHS App and Patients Know Best, shifting towards predictive analytics and population health management, and ensuring data is used effectively to support planning and service improvements. On innovation, MSE is reportedly developing AI and automation capabilities, modernising processes, and establishing a centre of excellence for innovation, “ensuring we continue to improve efficiencies and service delivery across the system”.
The MSE Shared Care Record is a key digital initiative currently underway in MSE, with the ICS highlighting that since its launch in August 2024, it is “already delivering significant system-wide benefits as its first phase nears completion”, being accessed 455,800 times by 8,456 users, and enabling the retrieval of over 694,200 documents and additional information from across the East of England and Greater London on 64,485 occasions. “This innovative digital solution brings together key information from various health and social care records into a structured and easy-to-read format,” MSE shared. “So far, Mid and South Essex ICS partners have started to realise a number of significant service improvements and benefits, along with providing time savings that are contributing towards the identified £3.6 million of annual savings across all care settings.”
The system’s digital patient portal, powered by Patients Know Best (PKB), launched in February 2023 to empower patients with access to their health information and the ability to engage with services online. Accessible via the NHS App or a web-based portal, it enables patients to view appointment details and letters, test results, and discharge summaries from Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust (MSEFT) and Essex Partnership University Trust (EPUT). Since launch, MSE reports that 232,200 patients have registered, with 457,500 appointments, 236,500 radiology results, and 101,100 documents integrated into the portal. “Engagement has been high,” MSE continues, “with appointments accessed 941,900 times by 133,500 patients, highlighting how digital access is transforming the patient experience.”
Looking ahead, the focus for MSE is on the delivery of a new unified EPR, a collaborative initiative between MSEFT and EPUT. “This £65m investment will create a single, first of type EPR system, replacing multiple legacy systems to deliver modern, joined-up care across hospitals, mental health, and community services,” the ICS notes. “This will be a game-changer, reflecting our vision to create a digital infrastructure that removes organisational barriers and delivers truly patient-centred, coordinated care across Essex.” Expected to go live in 2026/27, MSE hopes the EPR will “improve efficiency, reduce duplication, and enhance the patient experience—eliminating the need for people to repeatedly share their medical history when receiving care from different providers”. By working collaboratively on its design and implementation, both trusts are reportedly ensuring the system meets the needs of patients, healthcare professionals, and wider partners, “supporting a more connected, data-driven approach to healthcare in mid and south Essex”.
Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust also shared details of current programmes and priorities, including work with operational services to innovate and implement new digital solutions in line with the “analogue to digital” assertion within the Darzi review. The trust continues to use Robotic Process Automation (RPA), has set up a working group to understand the opportunities in exploiting Artificial Intelligence (AI), and is focused on improving patient access through its digital front door, “a one stop referral page to access all our services”. It has commenced a Waiting Well initiative to allow patient and carers to use its material for self-help and prevention, and digital inclusion is outlined as “an essential element” of Hertfordshire Community’s digital strategy. “We are developing our clinical system to make it more intuitive and allow our clinical colleagues tools to capture information,” the trust notes.
The trust’s work in digitising the referral process to the Children and Young People’s Integrated Therapies service resulted in it being shortlisted for an award, whilst its Digital Referral in and Automation to SystmOne project was named as the winner of an award for driving change through AI and automation.
“Our Integrated Referral Management Programme has since been revised and expanded to cover five project workstreams to capture and improve the complete end to end patient referral journey including Primary Care Referral Pathway, All Other Referral Pathway, Referral Registration Automation, Outcome Decision Automation, and Outbound referral co-ordination & process improvement,” the trust shares. “The aim is to improve the HCT referral processes replacing manual paper referral forms with bespoke user-friendly digital forms to allow external parties to submit referrals online at any time. Mandated fields and validation rules mean referrals are submitted with accurate and relevant information to enable the clinical triage decision.”
Also underway is a complex pathway redesign within Hertfordshire Community’s MSK service, “consisting of four phases some of which are carried out by a human, and some by the robot worker”. On this, the trust shares: “Creation of a Referral Outcome Decision S1 Template allowing clinicians to complete the referral triage whilst ensuring an accurate & robust reporting mechanism for the future. Including a revised list of intervention reasons in line with the Community Services Data Set with plans to standardise and simplify the configuration options across the trust and reduce variation.”
The HCT Digital team are also reportedly supporting the Systemwide initiative for the CYP Neurodiversity project, leading on the establishment of a single point of referral for neurodiversity (ASD and ADHD): a single referral logging function for ENHT and HCT. “This is the first step in mobilisation the countywide ND pathway with the development and implementation of a new Neurodiversity S1 unit being established alongside improving the overall quality of patient referral data and providing a seamless end to end process,” the trust states. And a proof of concept for the dental service using AI for clinical note taking has been agreed to test the software during face-to-face clinical appointments for nurse-led assessments.
