Written question asked by Lord Freyberg (Crossbench) on Friday, 23 January 2026, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Friday, 6 February 2026. It was answered by Baroness Merron (Labour) on Monday, 9 February 2026 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

Health Services: Technology

Question: To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential benefits of technology investments, including optical character recognition and natural language processing, to automate manual processes in clinical audit and registry submission across NHS England; whether businesses cases for that investment have been prepared; if so, in which disease areas or audit programmes those cases were prepared; and what were the outcomes of those cases.

Answer: NHS England is exploring a range of functionality to automate manual data processes aligned to clinical improvement, including for our Outcomes & Registries Programme, National Disease Registration Service, frontline digitisation and the promotion and adoption of new technology across provider systems. Our central data and digital transformation business cases are primarily focused on the adoption of the technical capabilities and innovations, applicable in many areas, rather than focusing within specific individual audits or registries alone. Some business cases have been accepted and moved forward.

Secondary information