Central to Somerset FT’s Musgrove 2030 initiative and its alignment with the NHP, the digital agenda has been designed to support the NHS trust in achieving its clinical aims centred around enabling people to live healthy lives, preventing illness and ensuring safe, equal and personalised care. As Somerset FT’s digital innovation healthcare advisor, Mott MacDonald supported the development of the digital agenda, while strengthening ambition and pinpointing the development potential for the NHS trust’s organisational capabilities to realise the full benefits of digital.

To assist Somerset FT in establishing a direction of travel, our team first helped to define ‘digital’ in the context of a future hospital and the wider organisation. The resulting definition was used to set a unifying digital vision, backed by strategic drivers, goals and a high-level case for digital investment. An analysis of Somerset FT’s current models of care was carried out, alongside an outline of how technology, when paired with a systemic approach to innovation, can support the achievement of future care models. Consequently, new models were identified for women’s and children’s services.

The team produced a set of patient and staff personas and experience journey maps, covering the areas of maternity and paediatric care. The output highlighted what digitally facilitated future state clinical pathways could entail and shed light on the role of technology in enhancing the health and care experience for primary users.

Through a series of clinical and operational engagement sessions with key stakeholders, the team was also able to assist Somerset FT in understanding the maturity of its digital capabilities, while outlining economically appraised capability interventions that would support Somerset FT in its digital journey. An implementation roadmap was also shaped around the delivery of quick wins and longer-term initiatives to instil organisational confidence and momentum in this ambitious transformation plan.