Patient safety in the digital NHS: user-centric approaches to technology and transformation (28 February 2025)

Summary

Digital technology offers the opportunity to revolutionise patient care, supporting the NHS to become more efficient, productive, cost-effective, and importantly, safer. This report published Public Policy Projects, in collaboration with Patient Safety Learning, highlights that the NHS will fail to unlock these opportunities without the prioritisation of patient safety. It sets out that although there are examples of successful technology implementation across the NHS, patients continue to be put at risk as efforts to digitalise services are not adequately considering patient safety.

Content

Key findings from this report include:

• A lack of user-centric design and interoperability between digital technologies is limiting scalable digital transformation and putting patients at risk.
• Digital clinical safety is being developed across the NHS, but a lack of resource and siloed working limits the ability for consistent monitoring of digital systems.
• A lack of understanding of digital technology and data is often tolerated among NHS leadership and the workforce is not adequately trained and/or supported to utilise digital technology.
• Opportunities to learn from the NHS patient safety reporting system are limited by a lack of data transparency and capacity for analysis.
• Digital poverty presents inherent patient safety risks where non-digital routes of access are not maintained, meaning digital transformation risks inadvertently widening inequalities.

Commenting on the publication of this report, Patient Safety Learning's Chief Executive Helen Hughes said:

“Digital health technologies will be key to delivering the forthcoming Ten Year Health Plan. However, if we are to fully realise the benefits of these changes, patient safety needs to be at the heart of these developments.

When designing and implementing new technologies in health and care, we need to take a user-centred approach, with patient safety at its core. As this report highlights, there are some promising examples of where this is already happening. Though as the recommendations set out, greater action is needed with system-wide collaboration, to ensure that the opportunities of new technologies are realised and the risks to patient safety are addressed. Patient safety needs to be at the centre of everything we do.”