The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT), one of the largest acute hospital trusts in the country, has completed the transfer of its electronic health record onto Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure.

The successful migration has encouraged the NHS Trust to begin putting its data platform into the cloud, too, with the aim of improving both integrated care and resource allocation.

LTHT, which treats around 1.5 million people every year and employs more than 20,000 staff at seven hospitals across five sites, is the largest provider of specialist care in the UK.

It began moving its electronic health record system, called PPM+, onto Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in early 2022, as part of a wider programme to enhance the technological framework for its operations.

With PPM+ now fully implemented in the cloud, Azure gives the Trust a secure foundation to launch and support other innovations and services.

«In a modern healthcare environment, the patient record is vital,» says Dr Paul Jones, Chief Digital Information Officer at the Trust. «The best way of keeping PPM+ available to clinical staff was by moving to Azure.»