Objective To assess developments over time in the capture, curation and use of quality and safety information in managing hospital services.

Setting Four acute National Health Service hospitals in England.

Participants 111.5 hours of observation of hospital board and directorate meetings, and 72 hours of ward observations. 86 interviews with board level and middle managers and with ward managers and staff.

Results There were substantial improvements in the quantity and quality of data produced for boards and middle managers between 2013 and 2016, starting from a low base. All four hospitals deployed data warehouses, repositories where datasets from otherwise disparate departmental systems could be managed. Three of them deployed real-time ward management systems, which were used extensively by nurses and other staff.

Conclusions The findings, particularly relating to the deployment of real-time ward management systems, are a corrective to the many negative accounts of information technology implementations. The hospital information infrastructures were elements in a wider move, away from a reliance on individual professionals exercising judgements and towards team-based and data-driven approaches to the active management of risks. They were not, though, using their fine-grained data to develop ultrasafe working practices.