NHSE to launch 2025 DMA over next few weeks, Diwakar confirms

NHS England will launch the 2025 Digital Maturity Assessment (DMA) over the next few weeks, Vin Diwakar announced at Digital Health Rewired 2025 last week.

The national director of transformation at NHSE was speaking in a keynote session on the Digital Transformation Stage to open day two of the event at the NEC in Birmingham on 19 March 2025.

He confirmed that “we [NHSE] will be launching the 2025 Digital Maturity Assessment over the course of the next few weeks” having benchmarked 320 NHS providers in the 2024 assessment.

The DMA is a survey, launched in 2023, to help NHS trusts and integrated care systems across England understand their level of digital maturity by identifying key strengths and gaps in the provision of digital services.

The 2024 assessment included primary care for the first time, however NHSE confirmed to Digital Health News in September 2024 that there are no plans to add social care to the DMA in 2025.

In his keynote speech at Rewired, Diwakar reiterated the pledge to invest at least £2.1 billion in NHS technology infrastructure in order to help achieve the three big shifts outlined in Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS – sickness to prevention, hospital to community and analogue to digital.

He also stressed the importance of the “pivotal” moment the NHS now finds itself in.

“Thirteen thousand hours are lost to outdated digital systems, that’s the equivalent of 7,000 staff,” he said.

“We’re at a pivotal moment and must invest in technology that is accessible, secure and patient-owned to drive real change,” Diwakar told the Rewired25 audience.

He also outlined targets regarding uptake of the NHS federated data platform (FDP).

A total of 71 organisations had adopted the FDP by December 2024, and Diwakar revealed that NHSE expect 200 organisations to have adopted the FDP by December 2025.

Diwakar was attending Rewired less than a week after prime minister Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to abolish NHS England and bring it back into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), with the aim of ending the duplication resulting from two organisations doing the same job.

Diwakar confirmed that he is on the transition team and told those in attendance that “you’ll be pleased to hear, or not pleased to hear, that you’re stuck with me for at least another year”.

“Organisation change for my colleagues working in NHS England is horrible, they’ve only just come out of the merger with NHS Digital, but I do feel strongly as a national leader that we are doing the right thing,” he said.

“While the process over the course of the next two years is going to be painful, we are at an exciting point,” Diwakar added.

He was joined in the keynote session by Dr Louise Schaper, director, Health Intelligence (Australia) and Pritesh Mistry, fellow (digital technologies) at The King’s Fund.