A leading hospital chief executive has championed in-house NHS technology that costs “a fraction” of major commercial systems – and said she does not use the federated data platform.
Birju Bartoli, chief executive of Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust, said a custom electronic patient record system the provider has developed itself showed there was an alternative to paying “phenomenal” sums to big external tech firms.
Ms Bartoli said: “We didn’t think we could afford [what commercial suppliers were asking], and it wouldn’t necessarily give us what we wanted. So the idea was born of: ‘Why don’t we just do it ourselves?’”
The trust launched the system in 2023, had continued developing it, and it was a success with staff, she said.
In a wide-ranging interview, she also cautioned that integrated health organisations – for which Northumbria is a forerunner – should not become a “fix all ills” answer to multiple problems, including social care.
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Source: HSJ, 24 August 2026
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