HSJ Health Check NHSE’s tough message on tech
Mar 27, 2026
Jo Talora, HSJ reporter on health policy and frontline digitisation, and Ben Clover, HSJ analyst of NHS tech and cyber, discuss NHS England’s public critique of tech leadership. They cover EPR training burdens and productivity, AI scribes and ambient voice tech, risks from big US vendors, cyber readiness and how the NHS App might evolve with AI.
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Keep Substantial Post Go-Live Teams
- Invest sustained post-go-live resource rather than ending support after deployment.
- Example: a Bath and North East Somerset EPR go-live team fell from 300 to 30 people post-launch, leaving gaps in optimisation.
Clunky Systems Cost As Much As Absence
- Poor usability and multiple logins cost staff as much time as sickness absence.
- NHS research equated time lost to clunky systems with roughly the same impact as about 5% staff absence.
Standardised Data Unlocks EPR Value
- Standardised data capture in EPRs is crucial for analytics and population health work.
- Clinicians using free-text (eg noting smoking) prevents analysts from reliably extracting data for population insights.