Why your NHS digital strategy is only as strong as your cloud foundation
3 minute read
Ben Lopez
July 7th, 2026
There’s no shortage of ambition in NHS digital strategy right now. And for the first time in a long time, the funding is starting to follow. The government’s 2025 Spending Review committed approximately £10 billion to NHS technology and digital transformation, nearly a 50% increase on previous figures.
Walk into many NHS trusts and you’ll find dedicated teams doing remarkable things, often despite the systems they’re working with, not because of them.
Many NHS trusts are still running Windows XP on clinical devices. The NHS operates across more than 40 integrated care boards, each at a different stage of digital maturity, managing its own fragmented patchwork of legacy applications, local servers, and data silos. And despite government ambition to digitise patient records, most trusts are still spending significant sums maintaining paper-based processes.
The challenge isn’t a lack of will, or even funding. It’s that when AI tools, digital patient portals, or automation platforms are bolted onto a fragile, fragmented foundation, they don’t transform services. They add complexity to systems already under pressure.
Why the foundation comes first
For many NHS trusts, the biggest challenge isn’t adopting digital tools, it’s managing increasingly complex Electronic Patient Record (EPR) environments. With multiple competing EPR platforms, legacy systems, and siloed infrastructure across the NHS, managing everything in-house can quickly become costly, difficult to scale, and hard to secure.
As trusts rightfully continue investing in EPR modernisation, the underlying cloud infrastructure becomes critical. EPR systems need resilient, scalable environments capable of securely handling real-time patient data while supporting interoperability, AI, automation, and digital patient services. Without the right foundation, trusts risk adding complexity instead of improving care delivery.
Phoenix Healthcare Cloud helps NHS organisations modernise and manage complex EPR workloads without increasing operational burden on internal teams. Built specifically for healthcare environments, PHC provides a secure, compliant, and scalable platform that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and on-premises infrastructure, helping trusts simplify EPR management while creating a stable foundation for future innovation.
Getting the foundation right
This is the conversation Phoenix has been having with NHS trusts for years. The organisations making the most meaningful progress with digital transformation aren’t always those with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones who prioritised getting the foundations right.
Phoenix Healthcare Cloud is built specifically for NHS environments, designed from the ground up to meet DSPT, NHS Digital, and UK GDPR standards, not retrofitted to them. It delivers the resilience and scalability that critical healthcare workloads demand, managed 24/ 7 by UK-based specialists. And it integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Azure, AWS, and on-premises environments, supporting a hybrid approach that reflects where most NHS organisations are on their cloud journey.
With £10 billion of NHS technology investment now committed through to 2028-29, the pressure to demonstrate value quickly has never been higher. Organisations that build on the right foundation will get more from every digital investment they make. Those that don’t risk adding complexity instead of capability.
Ready to build on a foundation that holds?
Talk to our healthcare cloud team.
About the author
Ben Lopez, Divisional Sales Manager
Ben Lopez is the Divisional Sales Manager for Healthcare at Phoenix. Having joined in 2006, Ben is driven by a passion for problem solving, he thrives on deciphering client challenges and responding with tailored technology solutions. Ben is fiercely dedicated to enhancing the operation of the NHS, viewing the implementation of Phoenix’s technology as an avenue to improve and save lives.