Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the finding of the University of Manchester, published in Nursing Standard on 9 May, that there is a significant variation in reported usability of the same types of digital technology across different healthcare organisations.

Whilst we have made no specific assessment of the Nursing Standard article, we have found that the primary reason for variation in digital maturity is disparity in national and local investment over the past two decades. We are aiming to address this through the £2 billion investment in frontline digitisation.

Where feasible, we are encouraging systems to explore integrated care system-wide solutions to support integrated care. As part of our Frontline Digitisation support offer, we are also working to build an England-wide community to share lessons learnt, improvements and develop peer-to-peer networks to share best practice.