Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, England’s first provider to combine primary, acute, community, and mental health services under a single organisation, serves around 580,000 residents in Somerset. With over 38,000 people living with diabetes in the county, the trust needed a faster, safer way to manage inpatient blood glucose monitoring and hypoglycaemia management. Paper-based workflows were creating risks. Better Studio gave their team the tools to act.
What followed was remarkable. A single developer working without external contractors built 3 clinical forms and a live glucose dashboard for inpatient diabetes care in just 8 weeks. Automated safety alerts now guide nurses at the bedside. Lab results pull through from hospital systems automatically. And the data, structured from day one on openEHR, is ready to be reused across care settings.
This case study examines how Somerset NHS Foundation Trust went from paper to digital, and what it means for NHS trusts facing the same challenge.
