Can AI Save the NHS from 274,000 Annual Tech Outages?

The UK Government committed to a 10 Year Health Plan for England last year, which includes investing in new technology to “liberate staff from admin and allow people to manage their care”, according to the National Health Service (NHS).

Recent progress includes a new online hospital and single patient record, to give patients more control over their care, digital resilience has to be at the heart of its AI-driven transformation. 

From securing data and modernising infrastructure, to preventing website outages, resilience must be built into every platform. 

However, analysis of Freedom of Information data found that NHS England and five of the UK’s largest hospital trusts – including Manchester University, Guy’s and St Thomas’, Newcastle Hospitals, Mid and South Essex, and Barts Health –  reported 274,620 IT incidents throughout 2025. 

This resulted in widespread disruption to patient care, from cancelled operations to missed routine appointments. 

Paula Lender-Swain, Public Sector Director at Dynatrace highlights that stronger IT visibility and resilience are critical to delivering reliable care at scale, while meeting the needs of millions of patients.

The government wants to make the NHS one of the most AI-enabled healthcare systems in the world. What digital foundations need to be in place before AI can deliver its full potential?

As a priority, the NHS must address foundational gaps in visibility and resilience. Without a clear, real-time understanding of system performance and patient impact, healthcare organisations risk operating with blind spots. 

These gaps are further exacerbated by decades of legacy technology and fragmented data systems. Connecting these outdated platforms to modern, cloud-native applications and ensuring interoperability across trusts and partners will be one of the most complex aspects of the digital transition.     

The next phase of digital healthcare will require infrastructure that can support AI-driven innovation at scale. By strengthening observability and unifying data across systems, the NHS can move from simply reacting to incidents to proactively managing them – reducing disruption, supporting staff and ensuring infrastructure is ready for the next phase of digital healthcare.

Dynatrace’s recent FOI research found that five major NHS trusts and NHS England reported more than 274,000 IT incidents in 2025. What does this tell us about the current state of NHS digital resilience?

The data clearly shows that NHS IT outages are a widespread issue, which aren’t confined to individual trusts or one-off events. Outages are occurring across multiple regions at scale with thousands of patient interactions being affected every time an incident occurs – and not just the operations that are widely reported on. 

With digital disruption now a system-wide challenge, IT outages should no longer be regarded as simply a technical issue – they have a direct and measurable impact on patients’ ability to access care when and where they need it.

When systems go down, it’s routine services like appointments that are most affected, which not only has a direct impact to NHS wait lists but also threatens early diagnosis and preventative treatment.

What’s more, inconsistencies in how trusts are reporting and recording IT incidents means that the NHS lacks a joined-up picture of how outages affect patient care and clinician time. As a result, the true scale of disruption is likely greater than is currently being reported.

The NHS continues to grapple with legacy technology and fragmented data systems. What are the biggest challenges organisations face when modernising these environments?

As policy makers push ahead with initiatives such as the NHS online hospital and single patient records, success will depend on the investment that goes into stabilising robust digital infrastructure. When a healthcare platform stalls, it not only undermines public trust, but it can also be life-threatening.

This means ensuring that websites, apps and data systems perform reliably under stress. AI can help to strengthen the underpinnings of the digital transformation itself by monitoring systems, predicting failures and optimising performance behind the scenes. 

In particular, AI-powered observability can detect anomalies and performance issues in real time, automatically pinpointing the source of disruption and often resolving it before patients are affected. This reduces downtime, strengthens resilience and frees technical teams to focus on improving user experience and care delivery.

Why is interoperability becoming such a critical issue as the NHS moves towards connected services and a single patient record?

With patient data on the line, interoperability across trusts and partners will become mission critical to the success of the NHS’s digital transition. Key to this is ensuring that public trust is front and centre. 

It’s not sufficient for NHS systems to simply connect, they must be consistently secure and resilient so that patients have confidence that their data is being accessed appropriately and used transparently. This isn’t just a technical challenge, it is also an organisational one which will require coordination across NHS trusts, local authorities and technology providers.

As the NHS continues to digitalise more broadly, robust digital foundations are essential to ensure that different services can be connected smoothly. AI-powered observability can support this by monitoring complex systems end to end, predicting emerging issues and optimising performance behind the scenes. 

How can AI-powered observability help NHS organisations move from reacting to IT incidents to proactively preventing them?

Without secure and resilient platforms, even the most innovative digital services risk flatlining. As it stands, the NHS lacks a robust overview of how systemic IT incidents are impacting both patient care and limited clinician time. 

A small error in one component can quickly cascade across applications and environments. Consequently, trusts are unable to proactively identify patterns, address root causes and fully get to grips with how IT challenges are holding services back. 

Beyond monitoring uptime, AI observability tools can provide NHS leaders with a holistic view of how digital services perform for patients. By correlating data across applications and systems, AI-powered observability means the NHS can better diagnose where demand is surging, where processes are slowing and how digital investment translates into real-world efficiency. 

As the NHS digital ecosystem becomes increasingly complex, AI-powered observability becomes the backbone of scalable, trustworthy digital operations. This means that the NHS can proactively manage incidents rather than simply reacting to them. 

With AI turning visibility into actionable insights, decision-makers are in a stronger position to continuously optimise the performance and value of services like the online hospital and single patient record.