Background
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and most operationally complex organisations in the NHS. With more than 20,000 staff, multiple acute hospital sites and responsibility for both local and specialist regional services, the Trust’s ability to function depends on the smooth coordination of people, processes and data.
Digital systems at Leeds are part of the Trust’s operational fabric. They support patient flow, clinical safety, workforce productivity and regulatory compliance at scale. Over decades, Leeds developed digital tools incrementally to meet specific needs, starting with waiting list management and expanding as services adopted them for their own pathways.
That evolutionary growth delivered real value, but it also created complexity. By the mid-2010s, the Trust recognised that sustaining safe, efficient operations would require a more robust, scalable digital foundation - one capable of supporting enterprise-wide data capture while remaining adaptable to frontline clinical reality.
The challenge
For operational leaders, the challenge was not simply digitisation, but standardising and scaling data capture without disrupting care delivery.
Leeds needed to:
- Support consistent, high-quality documentation across specialties and sites.
- Reduce operational friction caused by paper-based or fragmented processes.
- Enable rapid change in response to operational pressure, regulatory requirements or service redesign.
- Avoid forcing clinicians to change how they work simply to satisfy system constraints.
As with many large Trusts, documentation sat at the centre of this challenge. Paper and semi-digital processes introduced delays, variation and risk, while rigid digital tools struggled to reflect the diversity of clinical workflows across a large acute organisation.
The solution
Leeds addressed this by modernising its electronic health record environment through Patient Pathway Manager Plus (PPM+), developed in partnership with Aire Logic. Within PPM+, Aire Innovate’s AireForms was introduced as the Trust’s core mechanism for structured data capture.
Rather than deploying a fixed set of templates, AireForms was designed to be configured and owned by the Trust, allowing digital teams to work directly with clinicians to shape forms around real operational workflows.
Today:
- 90% of all data entry across Leeds Teaching Hospitals is delivered through AireForms
- 400 unique clinical and patient-facing forms have been created
- 36 million form submissions have been completed
- The platform supports all 20,000 staff, alongside patient-entered data submitted remotely
AireForms supports both clinician-entered documentation, such as observations, care plans and discharge processes, and patient questionnaires completed ahead of appointments. Data flows directly into PPM+, enabling immediate visibility for operational and clinical teams.
Results
All 400 AireForms use cases are designed to deliver operational benefits. One example illustrates the platform’s impact: electronic outpatient prescribing.
A prescription management solution was built using AireForms to replace paper outpatient prescriptions, which previously had to be physically transported to pharmacy. The Trust recorded measurable improvements:
- 24% reduction in paper prescription pads issued
- 64% reduction in time and costs associated with writing prescriptions
- 290% increase in eForm usage post go-live
- 78% increase in positive staff emotional touchpoint responses
- Hundreds of clinician hours freed by removing physical prescription handling
These results demonstrate how digitising a single operational process through Aire Forms can deliver efficiency, cost savings and workforce benefits, while improving auditability and patient experience.
Trust teams report that comparable gains in efficiency, clarity and operational control are consistently observed across all AireForms deployments as paper and manual processes are replaced.
Impact
For Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the value of Aire Innovate’s solutions lie in control, scalability and responsiveness.
Because AireForms is embedded across PPM+ and configured internally:
- Processes can be adapted quickly during periods of pressure.
- New documentation requirements can be introduced without lengthy supplier cycles.
- Forms follow the patient across sites and services, supporting real-world patient flow.
- Documentation triggers downstream operational actions, coordinating pharmacy, nursing, discharge and community teams.
Aire Innovate’s NHS provenance has been critical. Built through national and regional NHS delivery, the platform operates as enterprise infrastructure rather than a standalone product. At Leeds, it underpins millions of interactions every year, supporting consistent operations across one of the NHS’s most complex Trusts.
As Leeds Teaching Hospitals continues to modernise its digital estate, AireForms remains central to its operational strategy: enabling technology to adapt to the NHS, rather than requiring the NHS to adapt to technology.
