Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) modernise NHS IT systems and (b) protect them from cyber attacks.

The National Health Service has made significant progress in digitising and modernising their services in recent years. Notably, we are on course to ensure that 93% of NHS trusts have an electronic patient record (EPR) system by the end of this year, reducing reliance on paper and significantly improving both clinical safety and performance. We are also working to ensure that 74% of trusts meet the minimum standards for the capability of those EPR systems. Those investments will make a marked difference to the digital capabilities of dozens of trusts.

The Cyber Security Strategy for Health and Adult Social Care: 2023 to 2030 sets out plans to increase cyber resilience across the system. There is on-going work through the Cyber Improvement Programme that addresses the changing cyber risk landscape, expands protection and services, and reduces the risk of a successful attack. The NHS England Cyber Security Operations Centre monitors over 1.85 million devices across the NHS IT estate, identifying and preventing cyber incidents.