Digitising Patient Records at Scale

  • Healthcare
  • Interopability
  • Data

Over 400,000 records digitised

Significant cost savings

Used in over 4,000 GP surgeries

The client: NHS England

NHS England needed a solution to one of primary care’s longest-standing inefficiencies — the manual, slow, and expensive handling of paper-based ‘Lloyd George’ patient records.

With 70 million files scattered across the country, transferring records between GP practices could take weeks, sometimes even months.

The ask

NHS England needed a secure, scalable, cloud-first platform to digitise and store legacy patient records. It had to be instantly accessible to GP practices, require zero system integration, meet strict compliance standards, and be capable of supporting national expansion.

What we did

Answer Digital, working alongside MadeTech as part of the Hippo Consortium, co-designed and built the National Document Repository (NDR) — a zero-integration, cloud-based platform for digitised legacy records. The NDR removes the need for costly paper transfers, ensures immediate access to patient data, and enables real-time insight for clinicians.

Key features:

  • Cloud-first architecture: Hosted on scalable, secure cloud infrastructure
  • Zero-integration model: No changes to existing GP systems
  • Automated ingestion: 250,000+ records processed per weekend
  • Governance by design: National Data Processing Deed removes need for 6,000+ separate sharing agreements
  • User-centred development: Built in six months with continuous practice feedback

Into the future

With secondary care use cases and NHS App integration underway, the NDR is paving the way for national digital transformation. It’s already being explored by prison-based GPs and could reduce a £1bn annual cost of manual patient communications.

The NDR proves that smart, user-led digital infrastructure can deliver immediate results and long-term impact at scale.

The stats

  • Over 400,000 records digitised
  • Accessible by 4,000+ GP practices nationwide
  • Weekly cost savings to the NHS of £20,000, with practices saving up to £50,000 annually
  • 3,000+ users in a single week
  • One GP practice converted a filing room into a treatment room
  • Endorsed as part of the NHS’s strategic digital future