Blueprinting

The National Blueprinting programme, which is part of the Digital Enablement function, was established to help NHS organisations deliver quicker and more cost-effective digitisation, leading to better health outcomes for patients and improved staff experience. Blueprinting forms a key part of the ‘support offer’ for frontline Trusts, health providers and ICBs across the health and care system. 

The focus of the Blueprinting Programme is to: 

• raise the profile of good practice work to a national level  

• help other areas dealing with the same or similar issues 

• help raise the quality, safety and efficiency of care provision  

• opportunity to work in a more integrated way across care and health 

• reflective Practice for Informaticians 

• manage the creation and provision of Blueprints as step by step guides that others can use and adopt 

What is a Blueprint

A Blueprint captures a digital transformation project delivered by a Trust or care organisation detailing keys activities, decisions, learnings and advice throughout the project, as well as benefits delivered.

Blueprints: 

• provide peer to peer learning from digital transformation programmes   

• describe digital initiatives to improve safety and quality of care, clinical outcomes, and patient and staff experience   

• provide a structured collection of knowledge assets and associated methodology  

• provide step by step guides that can be tailored to suit local needs 

• enable the NHS and care organisations to deliver digital solutions more quickly, efficiently and cost effectively 

The Blueprinting Programme has a collection of knowledge assets (Blueprints, Blueprints on a Page, Technical Annexes, Project Artefacts, videos and events) designed to enable peer to peer learning across the NHS and care organisations. There are currently over 200 Blueprints and Blueprints on Page, as well as over 3,000 Project Artefacts available that can be utilised by health and care organisation to support their digital transformation. 

Benefits of Blueprinting: 

• accelerate delivery of digital technology transformation 

• enable confident decision making   

• support better patient experience  

• reduce risk from lessons learnt by other Trusts and care organisations  

• sharing ideas and good practice 

• accelerate success through digital transformation   

• inspire and guide others based on real world experience  

Blueprints can be utilised by anyone across the health and care system looking to deliver a digital transformation or implement a digital technology solution in their Trust or organisation.  

This could include Programme or Project Managers, Delivery Teams, Clinicians, Benefits Leads, Business Change Teams, Digital Leads, CEOs, CIOs, CCIOs, CNIOs, Directors of Finance and other senior teams and key decision makers. 

Blueprints have been adopted by Trusts to support a similar deployment of a system or new ways of working (full adoption) or to extract actionable insights and key learnings to shape and achieve specific business, clinical or technical objectives (partial adoption).  

For general enquiries about the service, contact [email protected].

To learn more about the Blueprinting Programme and access the Blueprint library and other knowledge assets – Blueprinting - FutureNHS Collaboration Platform (account required).