NHS England and Kainos partner to transform digital in urgent and emergency care
NHS England has selected Kainos as its delivery partner for transformation initiatives focusing on digital in urgent and emergency care (UEC).
Pressure on this area of the healthcare system has risen year on year, and in 2023, NHS England developed an urgent and emergency care recovery plan that aims to improve waiting times and patient experiences.
Digital UEC transformation initiatives support and build on that plan.
Supporting frontline staff, enhancing patient experiences
Digital Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) supports 999, NHS 111 (telephone and online) and a range of other essential services and data products that help with triage, clinical decision making and continuous improvement.
The NHS England Kainos partnership will focus on transforming three areas:
Safe, effective triage
NHS Pathways is a suite of around 20 products that support triage, and it supports the remote assessment of 30 million triages each year. It powers NHS 111 online and is used by all NHS 111 telephone service providers and half of 999 ambulance providers.
The transformation involves re-platforming, re-architecting and re-tooling the triage experience to make it easier to update content, standardise outputs, simplify reporting and streamline the process of mapping outcomes to services.
Digital UEC will also gain support for their agile ways of working, have access to flexible data models and systems, be able to take advantage of new technologies and get more valuable insight.
Directory of Services: Finding the best service for each patient
This suite of products helps direct patients to the right service after triage. It considers factors such as time of day, capacity, opening hours and referral protocols to recommend the most appropriate next step. It’s primarily used by NHS 111, 999 and ambulance crews, and processes around 70 million searches annually.
The Directory of Services has been increasingly constrained by its complex architecture and legacy technical stack. The project involves modernising the application, including the infrastructure, search algorithm, supporting data and user interface.
The outcome will be a modern, robust application that:
- Better meets current and future needs
- Integrates with a wider range of healthcare systems and services
- Provides a better experience for staff
All these benefits then result in a better experience for patients, too.
Using data to improve
Digital UEC’s data products bring together information from different services to tell the story of how the urgent and emergency care system works following triage.
This data transformation workstream involves re-platforming, re-architecting and re-tooling to address capacity and capability issues. The aim is to give Digital UEC the ability to:
- Incorporate new data sources
- Integrate with other programmes, platforms and infrastructure
- Analyse Big Data
As a result, Digital UEC will be able to make the most of innovations around AI and advanced analytics to drive ongoing improvements in triaging and broader patient journeys.
Expert team, proven track record
Kainos brings vast experience designing and delivering major public sector transformation projects, including having previously supported the delivery of the NHS App. They will work together with NHS England’s in-house digital, data, and clinical specialists in support of better outcomes for patients and frontline staff.
Matthew Edgar, Director of Digital Urgent and Emergency Care at NHS England, said: “Digital transformation is an essential part of our plan to ensure that every patient’s urgent care needs are met in the most appropriate place and time. The new contract with Kainos will complement our growing in-house technical and design expertise to provide improved care for patients.”
John Smith, Head of Healthcare at Kainos, added: “It will be a true partnership, with Kainos and NHS England working as an integrated team to make a positive difference for NHS staff and patients. From infrastructure and data to service design and user experience, we look forward to helping NHS England modernise and leverage innovation to boost efficiency and quality for staff and patients.”