The government’s announcement that NHS England will be abolished has sent shock waves across the digital health community.

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said on 13 March 2025 that the management of the NHS would be brought back into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), reversing the top-down reorganisation of the NHS by Andrew Lansley, former Conservative health secretary, in 2012.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH) provides emergency and non-emergency services to the residents of east Surrey, north-east West Sussex, and South Croydon, including the major towns of Crawley, Horsham, Reigate, and Redhill.

East Surrey Hospital is a large acute hospital for east Surrey and north-east West Sussex, providing an Emergency Department and acute services for the whole catchment area of the SASH NHS Trust, including Gatwick Airport – a total of more than half a million people.

In March we attended the Digital Health Rewired conference, one of the largest healthcare IT events in the UK calendar. With the recent announcement about the abolition of NHS England, we were uncertain as to what the mood would be amongst delegates, however, we were surprised to note a hopeful, though cautious optimism.

Andy Kinnear, former NHS CIO and now Independent Consultant, reflects on what lessons can be learned from the forthcoming subsuming of NHS England functions into Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Matthew Little, Chief Nurse Information Officer (CNIO) and Associate Chief Nurse at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, gives his view on the latest advances that the NHS has made and why it’s important to fully use the technology that has been invested in, while also innovating and pushing boundaries to make healthcare better.

Sean Kelly is Chief Medical Officer and head of healthcare strategy at Imprivata – the digital identity company providing simple and secure access for the healthcare industry.

Imprivata enables organisations in over 45 countries to fully manage and secure all enterprise and third-party digital identities by establishing trust between people, technology and information.

Mobile healthcare tools don’t replace traditional devices like workstations on wheels, but rather complement them by increasing flexibility and clinician satisfaction.

While many in healthcare believe shared mobile tools will be beneficial, the sector is still in the process of fully understanding just how transformative they may be. From a clinician’s perspective, mobile devices already improve the ability to deliver care more effectively, but the full extent of their influence is still being evaluated.

More than two-thirds believe identity management is important to their security strategy, yet less than half are using key identity and access management (IAM) technologies.