Midlands Partnership launches 5-year digital strategy to ‘enhance care’

Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has launched a five-year digital strategy to “enhance care through innovation”.

The strategy falls into three main categories, digitising care pathways; connecting people with reliable and secure IT; and informing care through the power of data.

Made up of more than 100 projects, the strategy aims to “improve our processes and to create solid foundations”, the plan states.

Steve Martin, chief nursing information officer (CNIO) at the trust, said: “Our digital strategy sets out how we will bring service users and clinicians closer together.

“It supports our workforce delivering clinical services and care pathways in a more efficient way, releasing time to care.”

Included in the strategy are a set of commitments to ensure staff and patients have the right skills to use digital services; to digitally enable care pathways to be delivered remotely for greater flexibility; to enable greater access to services to empower patients; and to ensure digital inclusion will be at the heart of designing services.

It aims to deliver a service that works “in seamless partnership with third sector colleagues across all care settings through the processes we digitise” it states.

Dr Matt Tovey, chief clinical information officer (CCIO) at the trust, said: “Digital transformation is key to ensuring better service user outcomes, staff satisfaction and efficient use of limited resources.”

The strategy, based on feedback from stakeholders, sets out seven digital principles to inform all work across the digitisation programme, including:

1. Engagement and co-design
2. Evidence based decision making
3. Demonstrate value, safety and improvement
4. Learn from experience and partners
5. Leading by example with integrity
6. A growth mindset and problem solving approach
7. Support training and access for all systems

Neil Carr, chief executive, said the trust would embrace a “one size does not fit all”.

“Reducing health inequalities and avoiding exclusion through our digital transformation journey will be key,” he added.