Parts of the NHS are still in the dark ages, technologically speaking,” says Professor Joe Harrison, chief executive of Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS foundation trust. “There are still sites across the NHS that don’t even have wifi. In certain parts of the NHS we still believe that paper and pen are the way to capture data,” he adds with barely concealed contempt. Harrison worries that the service’s unhappy history with technology, most infamously exemplified by the failure of the £12bn Connecting for Health initiative, a bold attempt by the then Labour government to modernise NHS IT but plagued by cost overruns and scrapped in 2011, has left it poorly placed to benefit from the digital revolution.

Harrison fervently believes that embracing tech, IT and digital innovation helps patients and staff and improves the quality of care. He appears both baffled and horrified that doctors at outpatient clinics still write notes from the consultation into the patient’s often bulging paper medical record and that hospitals send patients letters to confirm their next appointment. “The vast majority of people who use tech on a daily basis would be happy to communicate and engage with the NHS in a different way.”

Harrison unsurprisingly welcomes the NHS long-term plan, launched this week, which spelled out a much more central role for technology in the health service over the next decade. Headline initiatives include rolling out online GP appointments to millions of patients and more people using approved health apps to manage their physical and mental health symptoms. “I am really pleased to see technology and digital innovation feature so prominently,” Harrison says. “There is so much scope to improve service delivery and patient experience through the use of technology – it is not a panacea for all things, but there is certainly much more technology can offer us as patients and as professionals.”

After Harrison’s six years at the helm, Milton Keynes, an acute hospital with more than 4,000 staff, serving one of the fastest-growing populations in the country, is now one of the NHS’s most technologically advanced hospitals. It is as close as any NHS trust to becoming what Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary and fellow digital evangelist, wants the entire service to be – “an ecosystem for the best technology available”.

It integrates technology into much of what the hospital does, from giving patients wearable technology to monitor their clinical symptoms to booking appointments. Since last year, 300 patients with heart problems wear a wristband that automatically uploads their latest vital signs, such as their pulse, temperature and blood pressure, into their electronic patient record. This saves time, he points out. “The nurse doesn’t even have to put the cuff on to measure their blood pressure; it’s happening continuously. It’s something a nurse or healthcare support worker doesn’t need to do.”Harrison is looking at expanding this from cardiology into other clinical areas, including diabetes.

“This isn’t about technology replacing the doctor or the nurse. If you take the human interaction out of having to physically enter the readings into the patient’s record, then a valuable, scarce resource has more time to talk to the patient, feel their skin and see how they are.”

In April last year Milton Keynes became the first hospital to let patients book their own outpatient appointments online, something that Hancock and his predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, want to see happening everywhere. This ability to arrange consultations directly, using a phone or computer, “is the Ocado or Tesco home delivery of the outpatient world”, jokes Harrison.

He sees that facility as potentially only the start of a process of patient empowerment.“That’s the precursor to enabling that patient to look at their medical record on their phone, thereby making it transportable, and enabling them to go and see any healthcare professional, with their own medical record.” It would mean that any member of staff in the UK could see a patient’s medical record at the push of a button. But, given the NHS’s failure to introduce electronic records before, and with increasingly ageing IT systems, let alone any agreement over the many security and governance issues sharing such sensitive information entails, Harrison comes across as over-optimistic and overambitious. However, within his own organisation, Harrison has started this process. A&E staff sing his praises over e-Care, an electronic patient records system that replaced the paper-based system last May. Until the electronic system was introduced, A&E staff had to track down patients’ paper notes.

Now, staff can instantly identify any patient who arrives at the emergency department and see what stage they are at in their treatment. And when an A&E arrival is transferred to a specialist ward, their notes go with them – electronically. This makes everything quicker for patients and staff, says Harrison.

But tech isn’t cheap. NHS England’s own estimates put the cost of implementing its digital plans at as much as £13bn. Harrison says that’s a price worth paying and will even help solve the NHS’s biggest problem – understaffing.

“A focus on technology has to be our priority, as does the development of our workforce alongside this. Tech can support the improvement of the NHS. [But] it can’t replace our workforce. Can we concentrate on the workforce agenda at the expense of developing tech? Definitely not. We need to do both.”

Curriculum vitae

Age 49

Lives Buckinghamshire

Family Married, two children

Education Merchant Taylor’s secondary school; Open University (MBA)

Career 2012–19: chief executive, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS foundation trust; 2010–12: chief executive, Bedford Hospital; 2005–10: deputy chief executive, North Middlesex Hospital; 2000–05: director of performance and planning, University College London Hospital; 1999-2005: general manager, St Bartholomews Hospital, London; 1995-99: general manager, Northwick Park Hospital, London; 1992-95: service manager, Central Middlesex Hospital; 1990-92 – finance assistant, Central Middlesex Hospital; 1989-90: medical records, Central Middlesex Hospital

Interests Sport, horseriding, travel