From long-term vision to in-year savings: digital solutions for today’s NHS

The NHS is under sustained pressure to improve productivity, reduce unwarranted variation (clinical and non-clinical) and deliver financial balance while advancing the three strategic shifts set out in the NHS 10-Year Health Plan:

• moving care out of hospital;
• prioritising prevention over treatment alone; and
• accelerating digitally enabled services.

Realising in-year savings alongside long-term transformation requires partners who combine deep healthcare domain expertise with proven digital delivery capability at scale. It is critical that these partners not only work collaboratively across the NHS but also with other suppliers in the NHS’s best interests.

To drive productivity up and deliver in-year savings, in the current operational and financial climate across the NHS, digitally enabling solutions, aligned with the 10YP, include:

1. Digitally enabled primary and community care

• Virtual consultations and remote monitoring reduce unnecessary face-to-face appointments, saving clinician time and enabling earlier intervention.
• AI-supported triage tools help match patient needs to the right level of care first time.

2. Patient engagement and self-management platforms

• Apps and portals that support personalised care plans, access to results, messaging and education.
• Digital therapeutics for mental health, smoking cessation, and weight management.

3. Automation of administrative workflows

• Intelligent automation, like robotic process automation (RPA) and natural language processing, for admin tasks such as referrals, coding, appointment booking and data entry.
• Chatbots to handle routine patient queries 24/7.

4. Optimised workforce and capacity tools

• Digital rostering, predictive staffing models and workload allocation improve efficiency and reduce agency costs.
• Skills-matching platforms and mobile task allocation apps boost responsiveness.

5. Supply chain digitisation and e-procurement

• AI-driven demand forecasting and digital purchasing reduce waste, shortages and stock-outs.
• Standardised product catalogues and automated invoicing cut finance admin.

Just from these five examples alone, the impact can be felt across multiple levels: patient care and experience; staff efficiency and productivity; back-office savings with a host of positive impacts:

• Fewer unnecessary GP visits, reduced outpatient demand, lower travel and admin costs
• Patients take more control of their health; fewer follow-ups and lower cost per outcome
• Frees clinical and admin staff for higher-value work and reduces overtime costs
• Better utilisation of staff resources; lower staffing costs and absentee-related impacts
• Lower inventory costs, reduced waste, and fewer procurement inefficiencies

Unlike long-term transformation benefits, I do believe there are tangible examples across the NHS today which show where savings can realistically be realised within six to 12 months. For example:

1. Reducing agency and bank spend

Digital lever: e-rostering optimisation, predictive staffing tools, temporary staffing marketplaces. In-year impact:

• Reduce agency shifts by improving fill rates with substantive staff
• Match skill mix to demand more accurately
• Identify overstaffed shifts and redeploy internally

2. Cutting outpatient DNA (did not attend) rates

Digital lever: Automated SMS reminders, patient self-booking portals, digital triage. In-year impact:

• Reduced wasted clinic slots
• Better utilisation of consultant time

3. Avoiding unnecessary follow-ups

Digital lever: Advice and guidance platforms, virtual follow-up pathways, patient-initiated follow-up. In-year impact:

• Reduces low-value follow-ups
• Frees clinic capacity without adding staff

4. Automating back-office admin

Digital lever: RPA for HR, payroll, finance, referral processing. In-year impact:

• Reduces manual processing time
• Allows vacancy management (not replacing leavers)
• Lowers overtime

5. Reducing procurement waste

Digital lever: e-procurement, inventory tracking, demand forecasting. In-year impact:

• Reduce expired stock
• Standardise products
• Lower emergency purchasing premiums

It is clear from the above that the NHS has and will continue to deliver successful digitally enabling solutions which can provide in-year savings as well as longer-term transformation. However, given the current capacity – and in some cases capability – gaps, working successfully with partners may accelerate these benefits.

Therefore, realising in-year savings alongside long-term transformation requires partners who combine deep healthcare domain expertise with proven digital delivery capability at scale. DXC Technology brings established experience across NHS trusts and national bodies, supporting electronic patient records, interoperability, medicines management, supply chain modernisation, digital workplace transformation and advanced analytics. This breadth of capability positions us to help providers unlock rapid efficiency gains while building the digital foundations for integrated, data-driven care.

DXC Technology recognises the importance of delivering in-year savings through our digital solution, in addition to all the other known benefits within healthcare:

• A teaching hospital in the Midlands partnered with DXC to fully automate its outpatient referral triage process. This solution leverages existing assets the trust already used (so lowering upfront costs) and delivers cashable savings through administrative efficiency and productivity improvements, as well as increasing clinical capacity and reducing wait lists.
• A major hospital group in the North West partnered with DXC to automate its regional neurology referrals triage, removing paper and significantly reducing administrative effort by integrating with the national e-referral service solution and automating checking, ensuring that when a referral is in front of the clinician to triage, it is fully completed and ready. As it takes just five to six months to implement, this results in administrative cost savings delivered in-year.
• Barts Health Trust is in its fifth partnership year working with DXC to automate 20+ HR and payroll processes, through the automation of systems such as ESR and TRAC. The solution delivers 18,000+ man-hours through our RPA bots in one year, with a 12-month payback. In April 2025, DXC moved the trust onto a SaaS managed service solution, saving 20+ per cent per annum. Due to additional optimisation of these bot processes, redundant bots are now being used to automate further processes, significantly reducing the trust’s costs.
• Intermountain Healthcare partnered with DXC Technology to expedite the adoption of advanced IT solutions. This collaboration involved transitioning 98 IT employees to DXC, allowing Intermountain to leverage DXC’s technology management expertise. The partnership aimed to enhance IT operations efficiency, enabling clinicians to focus more on patient care and delivering significant cost reductions. A direct result has been cost savings delivered from year one.
• A university hospital in Europe partnered with DXC to help reduce the cost of medical diagnostic coding errors by replacing a manual, complex and time-consuming process with an automated system. Our solution supported medical coders in completing coding tasks correctly and more efficiently, managing the large amounts of data accumulated during treatment. As a result, the hospital is efficiently able to recover all costs for activities delivered, resulting in in-year savings.

In a time when demand for NHS services is increasing exponentially, and funding remains scarce, collaboration is essential for successfully implementing and then realising digital solutions’ financial benefits.