• Plan for NHS England includes shift from analogue to digital.
• NHS app and centralised patient records at the core of plans.
• But sector IT professionals say they’re unprepared and under-resourced.

A survey taken by Digital Health of 97 NHS staff in England working in digital, clinical, and operational roles points to a gap between the UK government’s plans to digitise the NHS and the reality on the frontline.

The “Fit for the Future: 10 Year Health Plan for England” was published by the UK government in July 2025, and sets a 10-year programme for the NHS in England. The proposed strategy for the UK’s biggest employer focuses on three “shifts”: from hospital to community, from sickness treatment to prevention, and from analogue to digital. On the latter, the Health Plan describes the organisation at present as “a 20th century technological laggard.”

However, of those taking part in Digital Health‘s survey, only one percent said they felt “very prepared” to implement the Plan’s technological plans. Twenty-one percent said they feel “somewhat prepared.”

There are several tenets to the implementation of technology proposed by the government’s plan. The first of these is the expansion of the current NHS app to become a full “front door” into NHS services by 2028, offering triage, booking, consultations, vaccine booking, access to prescription medicine, long-term condition management (remotely) and proxy access for carers of people in the community.

There’s also the development of a single digital patient record, which would create a single data entity for each patient across medical, social and health care. There have been several attempts in the past to implement just such a system, but each have failed. In April 2005, for example, a project to implement a National Programme for IT (NPfIT) which included a single digital patient record was branded as “the biggest IT failure ever seen” and was ultimately abandoned in 2011 at a cost to UK taxpayers of £12.7 billion.

In line with the preventative care aims of the latest Plan, there are proposals for frameworks that would allow the continuous remote monitoring of patients, which the Plan’s authors envisage would be achieved by patients being equipped with smart devices such as wearables, connected to a central system of data collection and analysis.

In addition, the 10 Year Health Plan advocates that NHS staff should get single sign-on facilities for all NHS digital services, secure remote access, and the use of AI tools. These are beginning to appear in some clinics on an ad hoc basis in the form of voice-to-text transcription systems at clinical consultations.

Commenting on the findings of the Digital Health survey, Dr Paul Jones, chief digital information officer at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Many organisations are dealing with unprecedented service pressures, constrained budgets, and a burnt-out workforce, yet expectations for progress at pace continue to grow. While we all recognise the necessity and benefits of upgrading our healthcare services with technology […], it’s challenging without more support for our staff.”

The survey shows that IT leaders in NHS England describe their readiness to provide the proposed digital services as “patchy” and in some cases, “chaotic,” with the majority (96%) citing workforce pressures as the main reason for unpreparedness. A third say their efforts are hampered by rising demand on NHS services, and 21% say they have insufficient workforce budgets.

Given the obvious challenges of building IT infrastructure for one of the world’s most complex organisations, and the current pressures faced by NHS staff in all areas of work (clinical, operational, and IT), the likelihood of success of full digitisation as outlined in the Plan seem remote without significant investment into IT resources. The Health Foundation puts the likely cost of implementation at around £14.75 billion.

The problems faced by NHS England IT staff in particular seem to be around staffing and funding. One possible light in an otherwise bleak picture could be the 10 Year Workforce Plan which addresses staffing issues in all areas of NHS England. The Workforce Plan (part of the larger 10 Year Health Plan) is due to be published early 2026.

(Image source: “Pyxis Pharmacy Robot by Nurse Station” by jk (talk) is licensed under CC BY 3.0.)

Want to experience the full spectrum of enterprise technology innovation? Join TechEx in Amsterdam, California, and London. Covering AI, Big Data, Cyber Security, IoT, Digital Transformation, Intelligent Automation, Edge Computing, and Data Centres, TechEx brings together global leaders to share real-world use cases and in-depth insights. Click here for more information.

TechHQ is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.