Kent & Medway Digital Innovation Board: Driving system-wide digital transformation

Summary 

The Kent & Medway Digital Innovation Board, formed and supported by Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS), brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to coordinate, challenge, and shape digital innovation across the region. Formed to accelerate transformation, the Board fosters collaboration, reduces duplication, and aligns innovation with the region’s strategic priorities. Through initiatives like a central innovation repository, AI guidance, multi-setting evaluations, and opportunities for workforce development, the Board is creating a sustainable, system-wide approach to digital healthcare that improves efficiency, equity, and outcomes. 

Challenge 

Impactful digital innovation in healthcare is happening across the region but it can be fragmented, and this can lead to unnecessary duplication. Kent & Medway needed a coordinated, strategic approach to ensure innovations are aligned with system priorities, scalable across settings, and deliver measurable impact. The Board was established to address these challenges by uniting stakeholders, streamlining innovation efforts, and embedding digital transformation into the fabric of the Integrated Care System (ICS). 

Approach 

The Board meets virtually once a month, to discuss the innovation agenda across the ICS whilst also utilising a joint Microsoft Teams Channel to share updates and knowledge between meetings. Chaired by the Integrated Care Board’s (ICB’s) Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO), the Board includes representatives from: 

• All four Kent & Medway NHS Trusts 

• Public Health 

• Local councils 

• Primary care 

• Community trusts 

• Kent and Medway Cancer Alliance 

• Health Innovation KSS  

Impact 

The impact of forming the Board has been demonstrated in several different ways: 

Innovation repository: Following the creation of the Digital Innovation Board, Health Innovation KSS developed and continues to maintain a centralised repository of 40+ innovations mapped to ICS priorities. The centralised database has enabled ICS colleagues to develop a clearer picture of the totality of innovations within the system, and it has supported strategic decision-making and reduced duplication. 

AI guidance: As a result of board discussion, a practical guide to support responsible AI use in healthcare has been created, co-developed with system feedback. The guide helps to demystify and simplify the world of AI in healthcare, offering explanations, practical examples and guiding principles to support its responsible use. The document will inform the creation of a strategic Kent & Medway policy for any new AI technologies that emerge and has been endorsed and circulated to board members. 

Real-world evaluation: The Digital Innovation Board has enabled the collaboration and oversight of a multi-setting evaluation of TORTUS’s OSLER AI transcription tool across primary care, outpatients, social care, and community settings. OSLER (Operating System Leverate in Electronic Records) is an AI-powered automated consultation transcription and interpretation solution. It is being evaluated on its impact on clinicians’ time management and system efficiency, and improving the service clinicians can offer, among other measures. This evaluation is the first of its scale, across four system settings, seen within the Kent and Medway, Surrey and Sussex region, and will act as a flagship project for what can be achieved through collaboration within the system. 

CCIO workshops: Through the Digital Innovation Board, bi-monthly CCIO workshops have been facilitated to foster collaboration, strategic thinking, and shared learning among digital leaders. The workshops, also chaired by the ICB’s CCIO and delivered in conjunction with Health Innovation KSS, enable the CCIOs from across Kent and Medway to meet in person with the headspace to discuss digital and innovation at a strategic level. Four have taken place to date, and they have helped foster a sense of community between the CCIOs which is reflected back through the Board and wider workstreams, creating an environment and the mechanisms to share best practice, programmes of work, but crucially demonstrate an ICS-wide approach to digital and innovation. 

“There was a real buzz in the room, proving to ourselves that we’re all enthusiastic to work to the same future vision and values. This was a great first step in ensuring the expert digital clinical voice is heard to improve our workforce and patients’ lives.” – Mayur Vibhuti, Kent & Medway ICB CCIO and Chair of the Innovation Programme Board 

Digital career pathways: The Digital Innovation Board has helped socialise concepts such as digital champions across the ICS. The local authority digital champions are involved in upskilling citizens in using digital systems, including the NHS app and online consultation tools. Better involvement of the digital champions will help ensure the success of any future digital initiatives. Further workforce initiatives are being discussed and developed. 

Spread and scalability 

Through a collaborative system approach, the Kent & Medway Digital Innovation Board and accompanying innovation repository will help support future innovation implementation, including through evaluations and business cases. This will reduce duplication and lead to greater efficiencies within the system, removing health inequalities from disparity in care, and ultimately leading to better patient outcomes. 

Plans for the board include expanding digital skills development through hackathons and coding bootcamps, linking with a newly formed patient panel to embed public voice in innovation decisions, and undertaking a needs articulation exercise to identify areas across the ICS where innovation can be embedded to drive greater efficiencies and ultimately better outcomes. 

Find out more 

For more information please get in touch.