With many healthcare systems, including the NHS, facing huge pressures in demand, there is optimism that technology can be exploited to support future workforce capacity, as recognised in the 2024 Spring Budget and NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.

How clinical staff feel about the prospect of using technology to boost NHS productivity and liberating them so they can spend more time on patient care and less time on administration was an issue the Health Foundation sought to understand as part of new research. To gauge the views and attitudes of the workforce, it carried out a staff survey and expert interviews, as well as wider stakeholder engagement and desk research. It also commissioned a rapid review of the evidence base on the impact of technology on healthcare workers’ time.

In regard to which technologies are saving staff time right now, the survey found that electronic health records (EHRs) and communication tools, including videoconferencing and digital messaging tools, ranked highest. The Health Foundation stresses that this contrasts with existing health policy, which is typically more fixated on headline-grabbing innovative and emerging clinical and patient-facing technologies.

“The traditional policy focus on niche clinical and specialty-specific applications of technology risks underplaying the huge productivity gains that could be made – both now and in the immediate future – from general-purpose technologies and those that support administrative and operational tasks,” it says. Opportunities to free up time in the NHS will need to focus on technologies that can help with administrative and operational tasks and inter-professional communication, as well as clinical tasks, it concludes.

Many immediate gains, reasons the analysis, will come from optimising existing technologies rather than adopting new ones. EHRs are an example of this, with many staff of the opinion that they will offer further gains over the next five years and more. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that adding wider datasets and/or using EHRs to develop machine learning algorithms could enable pattern recognition, risk prediction, and decision support. This strengthens the case to put in place a strategy now that looks at how to harness AI to boost the returns from EHRs.

On balance, survey respondents were optimistic about the potential of AI to save them time in their work within the next five years. They highlighted clinical documentation tools and software for image analysis and test results as areas where AI should bring benefits. There are also expectations that AI could help improve data analysis, risk prediction, and population health management. In this regard, the analysis cautions that healthcare needs to look beyond the hype surrounding AI and ensure that rigorous, real-world testing and evaluation of new technologies is carried out.

Staff also face barriers in using technologies effectively in their work, with the main ones identified as underlying IT and digital infrastructure and capability, and challenges with implementation and usage. Frustrations also exist around the lack of IT support, the lack of funding to implement new technologies, and poor-quality connectivity and equipment. The analysis found there is more scope to involve both the clinical and non-clinical workforce in priority setting, technology development, procurement, and implementation.

The commentary builds on the Health Foundation’s earlier work, published last year, which called for greater involvement and engagement of the NHS workforce in shaping how healthcare professions and roles develop in line with greater use of technology. It also follows the Health Foundation’s work on evaluating public attitudes towards the use of digital health technologies and data.