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This article is part of our Opinions section, where we invite industry professionals to share their views on the most pressing technology questions of our time.
Halfway through 2025, and following Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review announcement last month, it must be argued that the healthcare sector is maintaining steady strides toward digital transformation.
The NHS remains focused on improving patient experiences, maximising resources, and achieving greater efficiencies through the adoption of innovative and cutting-edge technologies.
However, progress in the landscape is incremental. If the sector is to build on foundations laid before now, we must recognise that data simply being digital is not enough. Utilising digital systems is not the same as retrieving usable insight.
Across hospitals and care settings, data is being captured at an unprecedented rate. Every patient interaction, clinical decision, and process update generates valuable data that is crucial for improving care, reducing diagnosis time, planning local services, and driving medical research.
Yet the wealth of unstructured clinical data scattered across our healthcare system is vast and, by its very nature, is extremely difficult to utilise effectively.
Unstructured data is generally qualitative. It is undefined in its native format – it is not categorised in any way – and, while it may be rich in detail, it requires significant time and manual effort to find and make use of this relevant information. This leads to unnecessary delays and cognitive burden for those on the front line of care.
Structured data, on the other hand, is quantitative and can be mapped into pre-defined fields. It fits neatly into traditional databases, like spreadsheets or electronic health record (EHR) systems.
Unstructured data, such as doctors’ handwritten notes, scanned documents, dictated summaries, audio recordings, free-text observations, and other non-coded formats, contains the nuanced detail that defines a patient’s story. This type of data is of enormous value to healthcare professionals – yet much of it (thought to be up to 80%) is essentially invisible to digital systems today.
Without the correct tools and clinician capabilities, this breadth of information remains untapped, becoming a barrier to innovation and efficiency.
Healthcare settings are storing more data than ever, but frontline clinicians still struggle to access timely, meaningful insights. This makes for a troubling conundrum: an overload of information but a shortage of actionable intelligence.
The consequences are serious – rising risks of misinformation, delayed diagnoses, and preventable errors are now part of the everyday reality on the frontline of care. To change this, procurement and adoption of innovative technologies must take place more quickly and strategically if patient outcomes and operational efficiencies are to be truly realised.
To date, much of the NHS’ digital drive has been focused on the technical goal of going paperless. While this lays a necessary foundation, we now must reframe the digitisation narrative from ‘going paperless’ to becoming genuinely purposeful. The imperative for progress must move beyond simply storing data electronically to instead enabling intelligent access, where the most relevant information is surfaced quickly and clearly at the point of care.
The next frontier in digital transformation is not about building more systems. The focus now has to be on making existing data work harder and smarter.
Data platforms must provide a comprehensive view of the patient and deliver actionable insights. They must be trusted to inform clinicians’ decision-making, therefore driving integrated care, enabling proactive treatment planning, and fuelling advanced clinical research.
By embracing technologies that extract meaning from unstructured content – natural language processing, AI-powered summarisation, and intelligent search – trusts stand to regain valuable clinical time thanks to systems that are now designed to serve the clinician.
Take the example of a typical hospital ward round. Here, a clinician may require access to patient records and accompanying notes containing insights such as allergy information, symptom history, and previous treatments. Without intelligent structuring, finding critical details proves as fruitless as searching for a needle in a haystack.
Fragmentation like this is detrimental to efforts to deliver effective and efficient care, but also severely restricts the clinician’s ability to extract significant insights from the data.
Healthcare settings likely to succeed will be those shifting the mindset from ‘How do we make sure everything is paperless?’ to ‘How can we ensure intelligent search helps reduce cognitive load and supports safer, faster decisions?”
It must now be about converting raw data into strategic intelligence and empowering healthcare professionals with the right context at the crucial moment it is needed.
In June, the Chancellor’s Spending Review highlighted how the NHS will receive a funding increase of 3% a year. Although a significant increase, this covers day-to-day spending by the NHS – items like staff salaries and treatment costs – and not capital spending, which would account for investment in buildings and equipment.
Capital budgets were set to stay similar to those previously announced, so it remains to be seen whether clinicians will really feel the benefit and be assured that data is not just stored, but that they have the time and capacity to leverage it in ways that make a tangible difference at the point of care.
Many on the frontline of care are of the same mind: capital investment in technology and digital transformation is long overdue, and a more innovative approach to working better and smarter with less is what is required.
Successful digital transformation doesn’t end with implementation. Data must be useful and collated in such a manner that it spurs action. There’s a crucial need for systems that understand, interpret, classify, and bring order to unstructured data.
Technology alone isn’t enough. Nurses, doctors, administrators, and support staff must adapt to the systems, become au fait with their work, and be afforded the time to utilise them to best effect.
The NHS must now pursue an approach that, yes, prioritises the innovative technologies that have laid the groundwork for digital transformation, but also enhances the skillsets and capacity of its workforce. Training initiatives focused on digital literacy, AI capabilities, and data analysis will enable staff to play a more active role in driving transformation, to feel entitled to make informed decisions that directly improve patient experiences.
By leveraging technologies that extract meaning from unstructured content and generate clear, valuable insights, the healthcare sector can reclaim clinical time, improve decision-making, and, ultimately, enhance patient outcomes.
This way, we are not simply digitising the NHS, we are empowering it.
