Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to (a) support NHS trusts with software needs and (b) unify software across NHS trusts.

NHS England supports National Health Service trusts with software needs in many ways, including through documentation, guides, support, a developer community, application programming interfaces, and mandatory standards.

NHS England is unifying software across NHS trusts through application of interoperability and accessibility standards and national services such as NHS Notify.

NHS trusts make their own decisions regarding the adoption and deployment of software and are expected to ensure that access to the tools they employ is safe, ethical, effective, and equitable for all within their remit.