NEW: Improving Maternity and Neonatal Care through Digital

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NEW: Improving Maternity and Neonatal Care through Digital
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  2. Start your entry (save it in-progress).
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Improving the safety and quality of maternity and neonatal care is one of the most urgent priorities in the NHS. The independent national investigation into maternity and neonatal services, whose final report was published in 2026, found services under significant strain, including IT systems that do not talk to each other, data that is hard to capture and use, and limited mechanisms for sharing learning between trusts. A national taskforce, a first-ever Maternity and Neonatal Commissioner and a forthcoming National Action Plan now frame the improvement agenda.

Digital has a vital role to play: electronic maternity records that follow women through their care, interoperable systems connecting maternity, neonatal and wider services, digital tools supporting triage, monitoring and escalation, and better use of data, from equity dashboards to outcome surveillance, to spot risk earlier and drive improvement. Maternity has also been identified as a priority area for early Single Patient Record development, underlining the national focus on joined up digital maternity care.

This award will recognise NHS teams using digital and data to deliver safer, more personalised and more equitable maternity and neonatal care. Judges will look for clear benefits for women, babies, families and staff, meaningful co-production with service users, and evidence that learning is being shared across the system.

Eligibility

  • All NHS organisations providing or supporting maternity and neonatal services (including providers, partnerships and systems).
  • Evidence must relate to a project, ongoing or completed within the 2 years up until the award entry deadline.

Ambition

The challenge and context within which your project, person or organisation is set alongside your goals and targets whether quantitative or qualitative, and how this aligns with national priorities.

  • Provide a clear rationale for the digital project, product or service and the context in which this was required - what were the aims, and what strategic thinking was done before bringing technology to the table?
  • Explain how the work aligns with national priorities for safer, more equitable maternity and neonatal care.
  • Define the intended measures of success and the steps put in place to achieve them, and discuss how the risks of exclusion or exacerbating inequalities were considered and mitigated.

Collaboration

The stakeholders' involvement in co-designing and delivering the project. How have patients, staff at all levels, communities and other parties worked together to realise the outcomes?

  • Explain how women, families and service user voices were involved in the co-design, planning and implementation of the project, product or service.
  • Share how midwives, obstetricians, neonatal teams and wider multidisciplinary staff were engaged in the design and implementation.
  • Describe and provide testimonial evidence of the working relationship between the technology partner (if relevant) and the NHS organisation that enabled a genuinely co-produced product or service.

Impact

The measurable benefits delivered to patients, staff, your organisation or the wider system. Provide data and evidence showing improvements to outcomes, quality, access, equity or efficiency.

  • Provide qualitative and quantitative evidence of improved safety, experience, access and/or outcomes for women, babies and families as a result of the project, with clear before-and-after comparisons.
  • Evidence how the project has improved the capture, quality, flow or use of maternity and neonatal data - including any contribution to reducing inequalities in experience or outcomes.
  • Describe how the project was deployed whilst minimising disruption to services, and share any financial impacts, efficiencies and benefits for staff.

Scale

How your work has been shared, adopted or replicated beyond your immediate team or organisation. This includes dissemination through publications, presentations, toolkits, partnerships or inspiring similar initiatives elsewhere.

  • Describe, and if possible evidence, how the learnings from the project have been shared across and beyond your organisation or system - judges are particularly keen to see maternity and neonatal learning crossing organisational boundaries.
  • Provide evidence of adoption or replication in other units, trusts or systems.
  • Discuss the scope for further replication or scaling up of this project in other settings.

Sustainability

The potential for the project/work to continue and create lasting impact. Evidence of how it can be sustained or built upon.

  • Explain how the work is being embedded into business as usual, and what resource or funding is in place to sustain it.
  • Discuss how this work contributes to the longer-term national ambition for safe, personalised and equitable maternity and neonatal care.
  • Describe your plans for sustaining and building on the work as national reforms are implemented.

NEW: Improving Maternity and Neonatal Care through Digital

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To find out more

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Awards entry enquiries: Support Team
Judging and event management: Awards Support