The keynote speech delivered at the Medanets User Days by James Matthews, Director of ICT and Digital at the University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW), addressed the topic through the organisation’s concrete examples.
The organisation’s digital strategy is built around six key themes. These themes represent major change programmes, each with clearly defined deliverables and actions. The six themes are:
- Patient-led care
- Streamlined and efficient workflows fuelled by automation
- Connected systems within UHCW and with healthcare partners
- Insight to support decision-making
- A resilient, reliable and safe digital estate
- Colleagues have the tools, confidence and space to innovate.
AI is considered vital to enable this strategy.
Desire for AI underpins all aspects of strategy
A desire to leverage artificial intelligence lies at the heart of all aspects of the strategy. Automations and AI are intended to remove burden from staff, including automated scheduling and AI-driven coding. The approach also includes supporting healthcare staff in entering data and reducing administrative time, including through ambient voice and speech controls. Clinical decision support is also included. Data mining is used to find areas for improvement and to support research and increasing the effective use of data. Tools such as Copilot allow staff to take control and improve their own workflows.
Less straightforward in reality
According, to Matthews, there are several current challenges associated with AI. Suppliers often overpromise benefits and minimise the implementation and integration effort, particularly in discussions with healthcare executives, leaving digital teams to manage expectations and, at times, appear to underdeliver. Timelines are frequently longer than anticipated, and data from source systems is difficult to access in the formats required for AI use. Organisational ambition often exceeds delivery capacity, with a mismatch between funding and the desire to innovate, and while time savings can be demonstrated, achieving true financial savings and return on investment is significantly harder.
At the same time, successful adoption requires cultural transformation, including staff agreement on new ways of working, increased training on the benefits of AI, and clarity around the boundary between AI capabilities and clinical responsibility. Many established models of care have remained unchanged for years, and digital and AI-enabled approaches must be embraced by staff to succeed. All of this takes place while the NHS faces ongoing financial and operational pressures in daily service delivery.
Successes encourage continued development
The UHCW Trust has successfully applied data mining to identify real-world improvements, earning recognition with an HSJ Award. AI-driven clinical coding and the Pathlake Digital Histopathology Research Programme are other examples of impactful initiatives. Moreover, non-clinical automations across finance, HR and ICT back-office functions are helping to release staff time from repetitive tasks, and workforce chatbots are supporting staff and reducing management burden.
The role of mobile solutions
Even without AI, mobile solutions bring care closer to the patient and enable staff to spend more time at the bedside. They provide faster access to results and patient records, while reducing time spent documenting in the EPR or on paper. The UHCW have been able to cut their paper consumption by 95%, and documents are always available in a fully auditable format that supports quality improvement. Clinicians can document observations, complete assessments, perform automatic calculations, review laboratory results and update records directly at the point of care. Immediate information sharing, clear digital displays and improved communication between multidisciplinary teams support safer and more effective escalations, including early intervention for deteriorating patients. Offline mode is vital to ensure smooth operations, especially for remote and community users. Overall, the mobile solutions have improved staff efficiency, effectiveness and patient safety across the wards.
Future outlook
Digital, including AI and mobile solutions, is a cornerstone enabler of the hospital’s overall strategy. Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, the UHCW will focus on advancing ambient voice capabilities, AI-driven EPR and mobile workflows, and automated data entry and coding to reduce staff burden. The ambition is to become truly paperless and mobile, while enabling staff to spend more meaningful time with patients and rediscover the value of direct patient care.