NHS trusts’ IT spend rises by 9% to £4.1bn in 2025

Total IT spend by NHS trusts across the UK reached £4.1bn in 2024/ 2025, an increase of 9% from the previous year, according to analysis by Future Health Intelligence (FHI).

The findings were presented during an FHI webinar on 30 January 2026, analysing trust-level IT spend data, drawing on annual plans, financial reports and direct surveys, with projected modelling used where responses were unavailable.

It revealed that England was responsible for 87% of the UK’s local NHS trust IT spending in 2024/205, with 80% of spending in  acute trusts, 18% by mental health trusts and 2% by community trusts.

Scotland followed with 7% and Wales with 4%, reflecting both population size and the concentration of large acute providers in England.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation had the highest IT spend in 2024/25 out of all acute trusts with £109m, followed by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which spent £90m and University Hospitals Birmingham, which spent £68m.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust spent the most on IT out of all UK mental health trusts with £34m, followed by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which spent £27m.

George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust had the lowest IT spending in 2024/25 out of all acute trusts, with £600,000.

Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust were also among the lowest spenders, each spending £2.5m in 2024/25.

Jon Hoeskma, director of FHI, said: “Within these figures there are huge variations.

“The two highest spending acute trusts, Guys and St Thomas’ and Manchester, are now spending around £100m annually, while the very lowest are spending just a few millions.

“As a percentage of budgets some trusts are spending 4.5% or even 6% of their budgets on IT, while some are spending less than 2%.

“We looked at spending across the whole of the UK and England accounts for 87% of the total, and within England acute hospitals account for 80% of spend [excluding primary care].

“The acute hospital sector remains the overwhelming centre of gravity for the NHS IT market.”

IT spending makes up an average of 2.3% of each trust’s annual budget, which is lower than other sectors.

Forecast shaping trends

FHI forecasts that the total spend on NHS IT national programmes will rise from £1.9bn in 2025/26 to £3bn in 2028/29.

Local NHS IT spend is predicted to increase from £4.9bn in 2025/26 to £6.8bn in 2028/29.

Electronic patient records (EPRs) are expected to remain the largest single market segment through 2028/29, but FHI predicts that their share will slowly fall as coverage completes and spend shifts to optimisation and productivity efforts rather than new greenfield deployments.

The fastest growing segments will be data/interoperability and primary care digital front door, according to FHI forecasts.

FHI also predicts that AI/automation will ramp up late in the period to 2028/29 as EPR and data foundations mature, but investment will remain relatively low compared to other segments until the end of the period.

Meanwhile, in July 2025, analysis by FHI found that despite governments’ efforts to digitise patient records, the vast majority of NHS trusts still spend large sums to maintain paper medical records.