Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS FT 2024-2029 maternity strategy highlights EPR plans for 2025

Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has published its maternity service strategy for 2024-2029, highlighting innovation and technology as key enablers to develop the service and noting plans to launch a new maternity end-to-end electronic patient record in 2025.

The strategy focuses on four key aims, including understanding clinical outcomes based on meaningful data and be responsive to this as well as reducing inequalities for those with protected characteristics, listening to and working with women from all backgrounds, and educating trust teams through active listening.

To help achieve this the trust’s digital strategy will be implemented, leading to the translation of information into a “multitude” of languages to support informed choice; and accessible options to self-refer online will be introduced to support people with reduced mobility or social challenges to book in their pregnancy as simply and early as possible. The trust also reiterates the planned implementation of its end-to-end EPR system for maternity, “supporting safe and effective risk assessment [and] care planning that is always accessible”.

Bedfordshire Hospitals places emphasis on plans to continue developing quality improvement skills to actively seek out, measure and use the correct data to identify and embed change; and shares plans to gather feedback on services from the local community using a range of methods, including online surveys which will allow the capture of anonymous feedback.

The strategy can be found in full here .

Maternity care in the spotlight

Last month we shared how East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust launched its online hub My Pregnancy Notes at Lister Hospital’s maternity unit, facilitating delivery of a maternity electronic patient record system.

Another maternity EPR was launched by University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust in June, with the deployment of electronic system and app Badger Notes.

In spring, we highlighted how The Black Country Local Maternity and Neonatal System announced a three-year partnership with ImproveWell , a digital platform designed to use real-time feedback to identify areas for improvement, which will see the solution used in maternity services region-wide.

Strategies: the wider trend

Last week HTN noted how The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust published its new strategy for 2024-2030 , with digital and data highlighted as one of nine “essential focus areas”.

We explored the Scottish Government’s strategic plan for 2024-2027 for the Scottish Cyber Coordination Centre , outlining the vision for a “digitally resilient nation” and setting out an overview of operating principles, functional structure and service development plans.

From Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, we looked into the new research and development strategy built around three key objectives: to undertake a journey of improvement including utilisation of digital healthcare tools and services, to ensure safe, high quality care, and to support and value the workforce.

And we took a look at South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust’s strategy for 2024 – 2029 , which highlights plans to “build a stronger SECAmb ready to face the challenges of the future”.