Recommendation 7

The NHS has not made the expected progress since its 2014 strategy and missed its main target to achieve a ‘paperless’ NHS by 2018.10 The 2018 target has since been redefined in a new target to reach a ‘core level’ of digitisation by 2024. We asked why a watered-down target had been put in place rather than the previous commitment to ‘paperless’. The Department told us that its ambitions for digital transformation within the NHS were no less ambitious, but that this target was “more realistic”. NHSX told us that it has made “considerable progress” against the new target, but admitted that there was still “a very long way to go”.11