A collaborative has been formed to help NHS organisations measure and improve how staff experience electronic patient record (EPR) systems, after a survey found only about a third of staff felt their system made them more efficient.

The NHS UX Collaborative was launched at the National EPR Usability Summit on 4 November in London. It will let trusts benchmark staff experience, identify problems and share approaches, rather than each solving the same problems alone. Its steering group includes leaders from University Hospitals Dorset, NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group, NHS Greater Manchester, NHS England North West and The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.

What the survey found

The collaborative builds on NHS England's EPR usability survey, commissioned from Ethical Healthcare Consulting and KLAS Research. Only 34% of the 23,662 NHS staff surveyed said their EPR made them more efficient, while 60% of doctors and 70% of nurses said they would welcome more training.

The survey also found wide variation between trusts using the same EPR supplier, with a mean gap of 51 points on the Net EPR Experience Score, measured from minus 100 to plus 100. That suggests how trusts implement and support their systems matters alongside the choice of supplier.

Training gap behind the frustration

Research published by the Health Foundation in March 2026 found that fewer than half of NHS staff using an EPR had received basic training on how to use it. In a survey of 1,725 staff in England, only 46% reported training on the basics, 49% had role-specific training, and 28% had troubleshooting training.

Participating trusts will be encouraged to make changes, track their impact and repeat assessments to see whether improvements last. As steering member Matt Connor put it, go-live is an important milestone, but it is not the end point.