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When budgets are tight and demand rises, the emergency services need to be smarter in how they deliver services to the public and that’s no different in the ambulance service where it puts the patient at the centre of its activities.
At a conference of ambulance leaders last month, chief digital officers spoke about the challenges of digital transformation for a service that is, like the rest of the NHS, part of a conversation about how it should look in ten years time.
The Health Secretary launched the NHS Ten Year Plan consultation late last year and technology is a key enabler of that plan. In a session at the Ambulance Leadership Forum, Sam Robinson who is Chief Digital Officer for Yorkshire Ambulance Service summed up the current position: “The ambulance service is clinically excellent but not always digitally competent.”
National approaches and the value of collaboration are the way forward, and ambulance services need to move away from tribal thinking, says Craig Ellis who joined Sam on stage. He is the Chief Digital Officer for South Central Ambulance Service and joined in 2023 after a period working for British Transport Police.
The truism that public services need to do more with less comes up during the discussion, but East Midlands Ambulance Service Chief Digital Officer, Steve Bowyer, says that ambulance services need to stop throwing good money after bad and get better value out of the systems they already have. “Getting value out of systems is the hard bit, the ambulance service needs to better at planning and thinking about outcomes.”
This point was expanded on by others on the panel, with Omid Shiraji, a Non-Executive Director at East of England Ambulance Service and a former Chief Digital Officer, asserting that any request for more people to solve problems faced by ambulance services should be met with a firm ‘no.’ He says that solutions should come from looking at making more use of the technology at hand, using automation and insights from data to really understand the business needs.
Having chaired the discussion on stage, South East Coast Ambulance Service CEO Simon Weldon joined Steve Bowyer and Craig Ellis to talk to Emergency Services Times about how ambulance services can work better together to achieve better outcomes with technology.
“The patients think we know everything about them,” Simon explains, adding that this frustrates patients who have this expectation. “We have to act at a more collective level – have core systems provided once across the sector, so no matter where you are, you see that patient’s information.”
In England there are 10 ambulance services and they are all independent so data sharing can be a challenge between ambulance services and more so with other partners both within the NHS family and beyond.
“We buy systems individually and we build sovereignty around the organisation and not the patient,” adds Simon. He says that ambulance services need to be braver and bolder about digital transformation given this backdrop and be prepared to do things differently because there isn’t enough money to buy all the systems they want separately. Or if they do, it is not done in an efficient and cost-effective way.
“The ambulance service has got to challenge itself to be more collaborative. We need to be a better customer. The only way we will deliver the change the patient needs is to collaborate because there is no more money.”
Collaboration already exists with regional groupings of ambulance trusts. Simon shares how it works in his area.
“My service is part of the Southern Ambulance Collaboration, a group of five services. We have made a promise that we will sign up to a vision of what future architecture looks like in digital terms. When money becomes available, we will not compete against each other for the resources that will be scarce. We will contract once and you get five organisations for the price of one bid. That is the model of the future.”
Steve says that this arrangement is not unique to the southern services with a similar grouping in the north. While he agrees that transformation will come from uniting together, he is also pragmatic about how effective that will be when it comes to encouraging innovation from technology suppliers. He explains: “If each ambulance trust was to put its money on the table to procure a system, it’s still not enough money for suppliers to consider innovating. It needs two more zeros on the end.”
With all this talk of collaboration, it also needs leadership and not all NHS ambulance trust boards have a chief digital officer in place at that level. Simon says that they have only recently made this change in his trust. “The evolution of the CDO role is moving at a rapid pace,” adds Simon, referring to the emphasis that former Health Secretary Matt Hancock had on elevating technology in the sector. He is hopeful that the ten year plan will give stability for developing capability and keep the focus on technology leadership at board level.
We need a ten year digital plan as a component of the overall NHS ten year plan, says Craig. “We have a chance now to make a step change to care through our technology ambitions.”
Change NHS has seen over 175,000 responses from the public and NHS staff since its launch in October 2024. Simon is optimistic about this and concludes: “I genuinely think that the government is serious about building a plan that commands the confidence of the service and patients. Collaboration is the way forward when money is tight. We can do more, but we need to do it together.”
Read our recent interview with AACE Chief Executive, Jason Killens – The ambulance service is more than just an emergency responder.
