Following the publication of the Government’s 10 Year Plan Luke Readman, Director of Digital Transformation (NHS England London), reflects on how the Capital turns the shift from analogue to digital vision into reality (16 July 2025).

The Government’s 10 Year Plan for Health in England and other changes to the health and care system, means that we are at a pivotal moment of change.

That’s why last week it was great to bring together so many of London’s digital health and care leaders to discuss how we work together to deliver the shift from analogue to digital set out in the 10 Year Plan, while also supporting the shifts to prevention and community.

Thank you to all our speakers including our Regional Director Dame Caroline Clarke, Charlotte Refsum from the Tony Blair Institute and Ravi Baghirathan from the DHSC. And thanks to Dell and Telefonica for hosting and supporting this event!

Understandably there are some very real concerns about the organisational changes taking place across the health and care system. But overall, my big takeaway from the event was the sense of optimism in the room that the Capital is well placed to drive forward the 10 Year Plan’s vision.

I agree and very much share that optimism.

Celebrating our successes

The event included an opportunity to showcase some fantastic work taking place across the Capital. We heard how:

• Over 75,000 Londoners now have a Universal Care Plan that is helping to ensure their care needs and wishes are met wherever they are in the Capital.
• London Ambulance clinicians are using the MyClinical Feedback tool/App to find out what happened to the patients they treated and learn any lessons.
• Ambient Voice Technology is already helping to ease the admin burden on clinicians while also supporting them to provide effective care for patients.

We could have spent the whole day showcasing similar innovative work. For example how there are almost 5.9 million registered NHS App users from GP practices in London.

Or how over 65% of GP surgeries have now signed up to securely share patient data through the new London Secure Data Environment that will be a world leading resource for healthcare improvement.

Or how the London Care Record has now been used over 75 million times and an independent study published last week has shown that it has saved health and care professionals’ time up to a value of £135 million.

We have a lot to be proud of here in the Capital. These are very strong foundations to build on over the months and years ahead and a genuine cause for optimism.

Priorities

As I said in my introduction at the event I believe moving forwards our work here in London needs to be built around four key elements.

Firstly, we need to continue to empower patients by giving them more control and more information to inform their decisions. But this needs to be done in partnership with them. Through the 2020 Citizens’ Summit and the subsequent deliberations, our current Citizens’ Advisory Group and the many local patient and carer forums London has a proud tradition of listening to the communities we serve and acting on what they say. This crucial engagement with Londoners needs to, and will, continue moving forwards.

Secondly, we need to ensure that we continue to look after our staff. Digital transformation needs to genuinely help them to do their jobs and provide safe and effective care. This means ensuring they continue to be centre-stage of the development and design process.

Thirdly, we need to prioritise our digital infrastructure in terms of looking after it better, and also thinking more ambitiously about it. Inevitably in some cases this is going to mean working at scale and working beyond traditional boundaries. We will need to embrace this approach if we want to succeed.

Finally, as in other walks of life data will be crucial to the future of health and care. Harnessing data effectively will support all three of the shifts set out in the 10 Year Plan. The challenge for digital leaders in London is to agree how best we do this to maximise the benefits, while ensuring we do it safely and securely and maintaining public confidence and embracing the potential of AI.

Next steps

None of this will be easy, particularly in light of the organisational changes that we are all still very much working through.

The London Region Digital Team will continue to take a leading role supporting you in this. Lots of work is already taking place in close collaboration with partners and this will ramp up over the coming weeks.

As more information is available we will share it with you through new, regular communications and ensure you have opportunities to help shape plans.

When appropriate, we will bring the right people together so we can work jointly at scale and at pace. This will include another event in November for London’s digital leaders that will be an opportunity to discuss progress made and to agree the next steps. So look out for the invite!

These are challenging but exciting times to be working in digital transformation. I look forward to working with you over the months ahead as we start to make the vision set out in the 10 Year Plan a reality here in the Capital.