Jonathan Bloor
Medical Director, System C
Gian Celino
Chief Product Officer, System C
The NHS ambition to deliver more joined up, person-centred care is not new. What’s changed is the opportunity to make it real, with systems that join up around individuals, not organisations.
People regularly move between care settings, often repeating their story as professionals work across disconnected systems. Delays are frequently driven by navigating organisational processes, not clinical complexity.
From fragmentation to coordination
Integrated care means designing services around people, not organisations, with teams working across traditional boundaries to respond to an individual’s needs. Dr Jonathan Bloor, Medical Director, System C, explains why this shift is so important.
“People are being cared for across multiple teams, including primary, community, social and acute care. This fragmentation creates delays, duplication and barriers to good clinical outcomes,” he explains. “We need to break down the silos preventing organisations from focusing on individuals. Care should feel coherent and connected, not fragmented across services.”
Without the ability to share information and coordinate activity in real time, integration remains difficult to achieve in practice.
Neighbourhood care depends on digital foundations
The NHS 10-year plan is clear: move care closer to communities and use digital technology to enable more connected care. Neighbourhood-based approaches can break down silos, ensuring services are wrapped around individuals rather than organisations.
“Neighbourhoods are where most people access health and support services. They are where local authorities, primary care, community teams and social care providers are best placed to respond to wider determinants of health and wellbeing,” explains Gian Celino, Chief Product Officer at System C.
“Neighbourhoods play a clear role in bridging the divide between care settings. The ambition is to bring together local teams, to connect care services and ensure people stay healthier for longer.”
But proximity alone is not enough. Without shared visibility, even co-located teams can struggle to coordinate effectively. Digital infrastructure turns ambition into day-to-day reality, enabling professionals to access and act on the same information.
By joining up care digitally, professionals can spend more time delivering care and less time navigating processes
AI with purpose
Artificial intelligence is often framed as a future opportunity, but its most immediate value is practical: reducing the administrative burden that takes time away from care.
“Technology has the potential to solve complex care pathways and coordinate care. The opportunity lies in transforming how these systems are used through technologies like AI,” explains Bloor. “By joining up care digitally, professionals can spend more time delivering care and less time navigating processes.”
In practice, AI is already capturing and summarising conversations, reducing documentation burden for clinicians and social care workers, streamlining the pathway from consultation to action by codifying information, prompting next steps and supporting timely communication. Bloor continues, “We’re used to technology removing interaction, but here it’s used to build rapport and improve human engagement, resulting in better care.”
From pilots to real change
Across the NHS, digital innovation is frequently demonstrated through pilots. While these show promise, few are adopted at scale. Bloor highlights that considerable focus will need to be placed on people, process and cultural change around the use of technology.
“AI-enabled capabilities need to be integrated directly into trusted clinical and social care workflows, where they can deliver value at scale,” explains Celino. “We need to move from value proven in pilots to full adoption in everyday practice. Once you begin the journey with AI, it becomes easier to add incremental capabilities and expand functionality. The approach is to scale out horizontally, ensuring practitioner and user understanding, then build value on top.”
Turning ambition into reality
The NHS does not lack digital tools or ambition. It lacks consistent, joined‑up use of those tools across organisational boundaries.
When systems are connected and information flows with the individual, integration becomes more than a policy goal; it becomes part of everyday care.
And that means something simple but transformative: a system that works as one.
To find out more, go to: www.systemc.com
