DMA must be ‘useful and usable’, says NHS England CIO

John Quinn, chief information officer at NHS England, said that the digital maturity assessment (DMA) needs to be “useful and useable”.

Delivering a keynote session at Digital Health Summer Schools on 18 July 2024, Quinn spoke about the need for a “one digital approach” which would start with patients’ needs first.

“I believe we have a generational opportunity to deliver some significant challenge in how we work, how we deliver our patients experience services, how we can take out cost, I think it absolutely is a confluence of things that are happening at this point in time,” Quinn told delegates at the event.

He added that the results of the DMA had helped secure the £3.4 billion investment in NHS digitisation, announced in the Spring budget in March 2024.

The DMA survey, which was launched in 2023 to help NHS trusts and integrated care systems across England understand their level of digital maturity, has faced criticism for being complex and time-consuming.

Last year it included 50 questions, measuring maturity against the seven dimensions of the What Good Looks Like framework: well led, smart foundations, safe practice, support people, empower citizens, improve care, and healthy populations.

Quinn joked that he would take feedback on the DMA “perhaps another time”, but defended its usefulness.

“The data made a difference because it told and proved we had a problem.

“So clearly, we’ve got to go back and make sure it’s useable, useful and traceable to the benefit that we deliver.

“We have to measure where we are, because that is how we convince people that funding is needed and can make a difference to the criticality of measuring those benefits at the end,” Quinn said.

The results from the first year of the DMA in 2023, showed that only 10 to 30% of the 90% of NHS trusts with an electronic patient record had key functionality and were making full use of their system.

NHS England confirmed to Digital Health News that the 2024 DMA survey would be expanded to include primary care.

In 2023 the survey was sent to acute, ambulance, community and mental health settings, but an NHSE spokesperson said that the 2024 DMA would include “a clearer capture of information”.

The latest DMA took place between April and June 2024, but the publication date is yet to be announced.

Summer Schools took place at Durham University on 17-19 July 2024. On 18 July, the winners of the Digital Health Networks Awards were announced, and workshop participants shared their experiences of the Digital Health Networks mentoring programme.