A new report – Building Trust in Digital Transformation of Healthcare – from the BMJ Future Health Commission (a joint initiative between BMJ Group and DNV) highlights a critical and perhaps under-recognised issue: poor data quality is not just a technical problem, it’s a patient safety risk. Drawing on a survey of 306 healthcare professionals across northern Europe, 64% of whom were based in the UK, the report showed that despite optimism about digital innovation, many remain cautious as to whether the use of technology truly reduces their administrative burden or frees up clinical time to the benefit of their patients.
Much of this caution stems from a lack of confidence in the information held in digital systems:
- 64% of healthcare professionals believe digital patient data is incomplete, and half say they must double-check its accuracy before acting.
- Almost half (47%) have seen patient safety risks arising from digital health technologies.
These findings mirror the daily reality for many NHS clinicians, and point to how unreliable data undermines informed, and therefore safe, care. When professionals doubt the information in front of them, they begin to view new technology as something that delays decisions instead of supporting them, which in turn provides obstacles to effective adoption. Digital transformation, in reality, will only move at the speed of trust.
The cost of poor data integrity
The consequences of poor data integrity are most visible in the systems used to track patients and manage care. Patient Tracking Lists (PTLs) are the backbone of operational management in the NHS, whilst Electronic Patient Records (EPR) are intended to be a single source of truth for a patient’s key details and medical history. Yet their reliability is only as strong as the data they contain – and MBI’s experience across more than 50 NHS trusts shows how fragile this foundation can be.
PTLs directly shape the timeliness and safety of care, yet in the Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting list for example, at least 450,000 records are affected by errors such as duplications or misallocations – far beyond administrative anomalies. Each inaccurate or incomplete pathway represents a patient at risk of being overlooked. This is critical at a time when around 70% of all open pathways on the RTT list are for patients who have been referred, but not yet had their very first clinical contact: the ‘frontlog’ of patients waiting for care.
Errors in data have consequences at every level. Across systems, poor-quality PTLs distort demand, misdirect resources, hinder effective planning and triage, and drain capacity from the NHS as staff firefight errors instead of delivering care. Having to second-guess lists and records is a preventable administrative burden that costs time and therefore money. Studies predict that if every NHS doctor in training and consultant lost just 10 minutes per day to system inefficiencies, the cost would exceed £143 million annually[i].
At the individual level, inaccuracies within patient records can directly affect clinical decision-making. The report cites cases where letters or identifiers assigned to the incorrect record led to wrong assumptions about patient care. This reflects the findings of previous research, with incomplete or inaccurate information being shown to result in missed appointments, disrupting continuity of care and thus outcomes[ii]. Together, these failures represent more than inefficiency: they amount to a serious and ongoing patient safety risk.
What the DNV–BMJ report makes clear is that healthcare must approach data quality in the same way that other safety-critical industries approach risk management. In aviation and energy, robust data governance is non-negotiable. Healthcare must adopt the same mindset, and for MBI, that means treating PTL validation not as a back-office tidy-up, but as a direct patient safety intervention.
Trust as the digital adoption bottleneck
Digital health and AI hold enormous promise for the healthcare sector, but their value depends on the validity of the data beneath them. The report’s findings make it clear that right now, too many professionals feel they must double-check information held in digital systems before acting, due to the frequency of errors. This mistrust slows decision-making, but also critically makes new technologies feel like a burden rather than a helpful tool, and can fuel resistance to the integration of digital solutions. The NHS does not have a technology adoption problem; it has a data confidence problem.
Validation provides a way to close this trust gap. By ensuring PTLs are accurate, trusts not only address immediate safety risks, but also create the conditions for digital tools to succeed. This is particularly critical for AI: predictive models that could transform how patients are triaged, prioritised, and treated will only ever be as strong as the data on which they are trained. If the inputs are flawed, the outputs will be too – amplifying risk instead of reducing it, and even entrenching systematic inequalities if they are based on biased datasets. Addressing today’s data quality issues is therefore an essential next step towards tomorrow’s digital transformation.
A shared mission
The report from DNV and BMJ sets out a clear call to action: strengthen data quality, manage risks proactively, and build the trust needed to deliver digital transformation to succeed. For MBI, the frontlog shows why this is so urgent. Unseen patients, inaccurate pathways, and flawed records weigh on performance, pose a risk to patient safety, hinder innovation, and erode public trust.
As part of the DNV group, MBI shares the mission of helping safety-critical sectors manage risk and build confidence in digital transformation. This report offers an important sector-wide perspective on the barriers to adoption, and our expertise is in addressing these challenges within the NHS. This means working with trusts to validate and clean their waiting lists, make the frontlog visible, and reduce the risks that inaccurate data creates. By doing so, we give healthcare professionals confidence in their systems, and create the reliable foundation on which digital innovation can thrive.
Read the full report here: https://www.dnv.com/publications/building-trust-in-digital-transformation-of-healthcare/
