With over 38 years in the National Health Service (NHS), including leadership roles at Salford Royal Foundation Trust and East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, I’ve spent my career focused on adult community services. These services are often less visible than acute care but are no less vital. They help people remain at home, avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and improve long-term outcomes.
Today, I continue that mission at Civica, supporting digital transformation across health and care services. For me, it’s not a career shift, it’s a continuation of my commitment to improving lives. Having experienced the pressures of frontline care, I now help shape systems that work for both staff and patients.
From frontline practice to health tech
My transition into the health tech sector came while working as a lead nurse in community services. We were collaborating with a technology supplier to improve our scheduling systems. That experience was a turning point. It showed me the enormous value of involving clinicians in designing and implementing digital tools.
Too often, systems are developed in isolation from the realities of care delivery. Clinicians can bridge that gap, bringing insights that make solutions more usable, more efficient and better aligned with patient needs.
Leading change from within
During my time in the NHS, I led several digital programs, including the rollout of electronic patient records and scheduling tools for community teams. These projects underscored the importance of designing systems around both patient outcomes and staff workflows. Technology that adds friction or complexity will not be adopted, no matter how innovative it is.
One consistent challenge has been adapting digital tools, often built for hospital environments, to fit the realities of community healthcare. Clinicians visiting patients at home need reliable, mobile access to records, sometimes without connectivity. They also need systems that work seamlessly across organizational boundaries.
Unfortunately, many current solutions fall short. Interoperability remains a major hurdle. Health and social care providers often use different platforms, creating gaps in communication and coordination. This fragmentation can affect the quality of care and contribute to inefficiencies across the system.
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The role of ICSs and shared systems
Integrated care systems (ICSs) and integrated care boards (ICBs) are beginning to address these issues by promoting collaboration across organizational lines. However, the pace of progress varies and digital maturity remains inconsistent. To break down silos and reduce duplication, shared systems and data standards must become the norm.
By aligning digital strategies across care settings, we can improve access to information, enhance decision-making and create more connected experiences for patients. This also supports more efficient use of staff and resources, something that is critical given current workforce pressures.
My role often acts as a bridge between healthcare professionals and our technology teams, ensuring we build tools that truly support frontline staff. With better visibility into capacity and demand, organizations have been able to allocate resources more effectively, reshape services and even start developing new clinical data insights. These are tangible benefits that improve patient outcomes and help make the most of stretched NHS resources.
A digital NHS for the future
Despite real progress, many parts of the NHS still rely on paper-based processes. This limits access to real-time data, slows down care delivery and makes integrated working difficult. A fully digital NHS, spanning primary, secondary, social and voluntary care, has the potential to revolutionize how we plan and deliver services.
If I could introduce one solution across the NHS tomorrow, it would be a system that enables seamless interoperability between all care providers. Breaking down digital silos would not only improve safety and patient outcomes but also ease pressure on staff by reducing duplication and administrative burden. It would also support greater job satisfaction, something often overlooked in digital transformation programs.
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Clinicians must lead the way
One of the most encouraging developments in recent years is the growing recognition of the clinician’s role in digital change. More NHS organizations are embedding digital champions into transformation teams and many clinicians are moving into health tech roles full time.
I would encourage any healthcare professional interested in improving services to consider a role in digital innovation. Whether by leading local projects or joining technology providers, clinicians bring vital insights that can make digital tools more relevant and effective.
The NHS is on a digital journey. For it to succeed, clinical voices must remain central. By working together across sectors, we can build systems that are not just digital for the sake of it, but genuinely transformational, improving care, supporting staff and building a more resilient NHS for the future.