Same-day delivery across the complex NHS application estate

2 hours

Testing time reduced from 1 week to ~2 hours per release

76

Scaled from 0 to 76 automated tests running daily in under a year

60+

Built 60+ automated assurance scenarios covering critical workflows

Who is the Princess Alexandra NHS Trust?

As part of the wider NHS for England, The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust delivers critical services across a wide range of acute and outpatient services.

All NHS trusts operate within a complex, interconnected digital ecosystem, which includes Electronic Patient Records (EPR), emergency department systems, and multiple downstream clinical and operational platforms.

NHS Trusts are also under pressure to meet the UK Government’s 2025 “Digital by Default” Mandate, which asked for all EPR systems to be digitized. As every implementation, go-live, and release carries real-world impact, the digital by default transformation makes speed, reliability, and governance non-negotiables.

THE CHALLENGE

Manual testing as the bottleneck

The digital by default mandate to digitize EPR systems has meant that NHS Trusts are facing accelerated change across their already interconnected applications. The Princess Alexandra Trust was no exception, but their manual testing processes struggled to keep pace with the scale and complexity of their systems, which saw:

• 27 applications requiring validation across their interconnected workflows.
• 3 team members spending at least half a day, every day, on manual testing.
• Release validation could take up to one full week.

For Liz Barber, ICT Testing Manager & Testing Automation at the Trust, this created a bottleneck in delivery, slowed down releases, and placed a continuous burden on the QA team. This process was inefficient, but in a healthcare setting, it also introduced risk to operational continuity and patient care systems.

THE SOLUTION

Continuous validation across critical NHS systems

The Princess Alexandra Trust looked to find a continuous validation solution to maintain confidence across their systems. Liz and her team implemented Leapwork’s continuous validation platform to scale and modernise their testing approach. With Leapwork, the team was able to build automated test coverage across their EPR, Oracle, and other downstream systems.

With Leapwork, the team:

• Transitioned from manual testing to continuous, automated validation, which is now embedded in the release cycle.
• Enabled their non-technical team members, not just those with coding expertise, to design and maintain tests through visual automation.
• Rapidly built and scaled automated tests across each of their systems, using Leapwork’s reusable test cases for ongoing maintenance.

THE IMPACT

Digital by default with scalable automation and delivery

The Princess Alexandra NHS Trust thrilled with the results, seeing:

• Release testing reduced from 1 week to 2 hours
• Scaled from 0 to 76 automated tests running daily in under a year
• Delivered 60+ automated assurance scenarios across critical workflows

The Princess Alexandra Trust has moved from reactive, time-intensive testing to a continuous validation model, where quality actually keeps pace with delivery.

With Leapwork, they are ensuring confidence across their interconnected systems and can use the time they save for what matters most: patient care.

• “Unlike other automation tools, Leapwork has minimum maintenance and less dependency on the infrastructure team. It’s easy to learn without having a coding background.”

Liz Barber
ICT Testing Manager & Testing Automation, The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust

Stop Testing Your Patience

Bring your systems, your workflows, and your release challenges. We’ll show how continuous validation performs across them.