NHS: Digital Technology

(asked on 31st January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 329 of his Departmental Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23, how much and what proportion of the £432 million allocated for NHS technology programmes was used for (a) improvements for managing and sharing digital patient records between health care providers across the country, (b) transforming remote monitoring of patients and (c) raising digital maturity; what the outcomes of that expenditure was; and whether external suppliers were contracted for the purposes of delivering that work.


Answered by
Andrew Stephenson Portrait
Andrew Stephenson
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 7th February 2024

In 2022/23, the Frontline Digitisation programme provided £393 million of capital funding and £45.29 million of revenue funding directly to 159 National Health Service secondary care provider trusts. The figures referred to by the Department are a contribution to the overall Transformation Portfolio, which funds a wide array of work, including the deployment of the Electronic Patient Record Systems and Shared Care Records. The intended outcome of this expenditure is to support the implementation of digital capabilities and enable infrastructure to meet our core digitisation standards and improve digital maturity.

As part of digitising adult social care, £2.3 million supported approximately 13,000 people with vital signs remote monitoring technology over 2022/23. The intended outcome of this expenditure is to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and improve quality of care. Funding allocations were agreed directly with integrated care boards and NHS trusts. However, external suppliers may have been contracted at a local level.

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