Reducing health inequalities is central to the 10-Year Health Plan. But achieving this with limited resources will mean “working smarter”, according to a former cabinet minister speaking at an HSJ webinar, held in association with Sciensus.
The government’s 10YHP for England describes three shifts to transform the NHS: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and treatment to prevention.
In association with
“Connected care” encapsulates the first two and is currently high on the agenda of any leader focused on service transformation, productivity, or improving access to care. Providers continue to refine their use of digital technologies to deliver healthcare outside of traditional settings, within patients’ homes and communities.
Though not a new practice, the hope is that connected care can help deliver the plan’s aims, not least by reducing some of the UK’s persistent health inequalities.
An HSJ webinar, held in association with Sciensus, brought together a panel to discuss the data behind these inequalities, assess progress, and share solutions. You can watch the full 45-minute session for free.
Why care at home matters for work, education, and opportunity
Former education secretary Justine Greening now chairs the Purpose Coalition, which released its own Connected Care Report in April 2026. The report, she said, identified that clinical homecare can have a dramatic impact on broader society.
“Health inequalities and socio‑economic inequalities are inextricably linked,” said Ms Greening.
For adults, receiving care at home directly impacts their ability to stay in work and continue a career. And there are similar benefits for young people.
“At a time when we’re debating how many children are out of education post-covid, it’s absolutely crucial that ill health and health inequalities don’t stop children [and] young people from being able to continue their education,” she added.
Interoperability is the next hurdle
Idris Bobat, Gloucestershire Hospitals Foundation Trust’s lead pharmacist for homecare and medication safety, acknowledges that while clinical homecare has been around for at least 20 years, the experience of using digital tools has vastly improved over the past five years. This, he says, is down to improved collaboration between providers, the NHS, and patient support groups.
“With the development of apps, you can see where your prescription is in real time. You can see where your delivery is in real time. You’re not bound to the phone. You’re not bound to your home. You can continue with your day-to-day activities,” said Mr Bobat.
But there is still a way to go. Better interoperability is crucial if the NHS is to realise the goals set out in the 10YHP, said Sir Jonathan Asbridge, chief clinical officer at Sciensus and president and chair of the Council at the European Society for Person-Centred Healthcare.
This, he believes, will help providers deliver care more efficiently, especially on first contact with a patient. He is optimistic about AI’s potential to deliver here, for example, by summarising patients’ needs and reducing the burden on clinicians of sifting through large volumes of patient notes.
“Digital is going to be an essential component to make the NHS plan really effective,” said Sir Jonathan.
“I’m really quite pleased to see the proposal for investment [that] the government is making to bring that forward, because it is very important for patient safety. It’s very important for the quality of clinical care as well, and communication between healthcare professionals.”
But Mr Bobat said apps from different providers don’t always talk to each other. “We still have many digital solutions working in silo,” he said. “We do need it to come together and collaborate… There are difficulties that we do need to address in the digital world.”
Working smarter with limited resources
Progress, then, has been encouraging, and the areas for improvement appear to be clear. But as one viewer asked, where are the resources to put these changes into practice?
The answer partly lies in “working smarter”, said Ms Greening. She sees scope to redeploy resources more effectively within systems, freeing up money to tackle priority areas.
One practical route to doing this, the panel suggested, is using digital tools to release capacity while maintaining non-digital options for patients who need them.
Mr Bobat highlighted that the shift to digital, when done properly, can help relieve several of these issues at once.
He said that while traditional communication methods still exist for those who preferred to use them, “what we do find now is it’s easier to contact homecare providers. It’s easier to contact NHS teams, because we’ve got a cohort of patients who are now using digital tools, therefore freeing up other resources.”
However, discussions of improved digital services and interoperability between providers inevitably raise the question of data sharing – a notoriously difficult issue for the NHS to resolve.
While recognising that governance is “hugely important”, Ms Greening thinks that “people’s attitudes towards data have radically changed”.
“Across the board, this is potentially something the NHS could hugely innovate on – in a controlled way – to make sure data is managed properly.”
Sir Jonathan agreed that information governance issues should not be a barrier to care and pointed to this being a motivation behind the Caldicott Report, which is now nearly 30 years old.
“The whole reason the Caldicott Report was published was to make sure that IG [information governance] doesn’t become a barrier to decision making and access to information to make clinical decisions,” he added.
Digital inclusion is now part of health inclusion
In a world where healthcare provision is increasingly digitised, digital inequalities and health inequalities have become linked. Tackling them may require a broader approach across government – beyond the Department of Health and Social Care. As Ms Greening pointed out, digital inclusion falls under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s remit.
“I think you can start to see how, in a sense, the NHS 10YHP is, in part… down to other departments to be engaged on helping to deliver,” said Ms Greening.
Sir Jonathan summed up the session by recapitulating the need to address poverty of all kinds – financial, digital, and health – to make meaningful progress on improving socio-economic markers.
“People who are living in poverty… are therefore living often in clinical poverty because they are unable to access services. I think digital and homecare is a very big part of expanding that.”
An on-demand version of this webinar is available.
Complete the registration form here, and you will then be sent details of how to access the recording.
