HSC - Digital Health Rewired 2026 Review | Day One

Alongside these topics, one theme stood out more strongly than it has in previous years: neighbourhood health. As a central part of the NHS 10-Year Plan, neighbourhood health is something organisations and teams are actively trying to apply to their ways of working, focusing on what it actually looks like to deliver this model of care at a local level.

Throughout day one, the discussion kept returning to the challenges continuously facing the landscape, of which are well understood, but delivering the solutions in a way that feels joined up, consistent and practical remains complex.

All the sessions we attended offered different perspectives on what it would take to overcome the barriers, but progress depends less on individual solutions, and more on how well systems, teams and information come together to support care in a way that works for people.

That all said, we’ve summarised the key overall learnings, the core messages that came from each session, and what we enjoyed most about the day.

The opening keynote set a clear tone for the day.: There’s no shortage of ambition across the NHS, but there remains a gap between what the system is aiming for and what it is currently set up to support. The shift outlined in the 10-Year Plan (moving care away from hospitals and closer to communities), is as much about redesigning how services connect as it is about introducing new technology.

National Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) at NHS England, Alec Price-Forbes, captured this shift in a single but powerful line: “A neighbourhood health centre when needed, and a hospital when absolutely necessary.”

It might sound like a simple phrase, but it’s one with significant implications. Moving care closer to communities means rethinking how services are organised, how information flows, and how patients experience their journey. As Alec pointed out, there is a real risk in trying to force that future into systems built for a different model of care, particularly if technology is layered in without properly addressing and reinforcing the foundations underneath it.

Chief Executive of The Health Foundation, Jennifer Dixon, built on that by reflecting on how familiar many of these ambitions feel. While AI is often framed as the “catalyst for change”, she noted that progress largely depends on how the system aligns around it.

“We can’t carry on with the same approaches and expect fundamentally different results,” she said.

Her focus then turned to the practicalities of making AI work in reality, particularly when it comes to infrastructure and evaluation. The tools may be moving quickly, but the NHS still needs the architecture and feedback loops to support them. Without these things in place, we risk widening the gap between ambition and delivery rather than closing it.

If the keynote set out the vision, the next session focused on what happens when systems try to deliver it. Examples from Gloucestershire and Wolverhampton showed how integrated data and more coordinated pathways can begin to reduce delays, avoid unnecessary admissions and give clinicians a clearer view of patient journeys.

GP and Access’ Medical Advisory Board member, Dr Harpreet Sood, brought the conversation back to a challenge that still shapes everyday care.

“Many patients are struggling today because we get caught up in whether it’s a GP problem or a hospital problem.”

That tension reflects a system still organised around institutions rather than patient pathways. He pointed out that if neighbourhood health is going to work, primary care has to sit at the centre, supported by shared visibility across community services, social care and the voluntary sector.

The discussion also highlighted what needs to change to make that model sustainable. Funding needs to shift towards community settings, interoperability has to work at neighbourhood level, and adoption needs to be treated as seriously as implementation.

Technology also plays a role, but only when it supports coordination and continuity rather than reinforcing existing boundaries or creating new ones.

This theme continued into Access’ sponsored keynote, where the focus moved from local delivery to system-wide change. Director of NHS England’s National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme, Dr Minal Bakhai MBE, grounded the ambition in something tangible, describing neighbourhood health as a way to help people live “gloriously ordinary lives” through stronger local partnerships and improved population health.

Her reflections from across the NHS’s pioneer sites consistently showed that progress happens when there is shared accountability and trust, but also enough flexibility for local areas to contribute to how change is delivered.

“We need to be tight on shared accountability, actively learning from each other, and loose on implementation.”

Much of the session denoted that neighbourhood health is a balance of relationships and culture as much as it is infrastructure, and striking it requires services to move beyond organisational boundaries and operate as part of something more connected at a local level.

Deborah Teale, Patient Advocate and also an Access Health and Care Advisory Board member, gave her perspective, which brought that reality even more into focus. With a rolling carousel of her beautiful artwork in the background, Debs shared her experience of navigating multiple conditions across disconnected services, with her paintings illustrating what fragmentation feels like from the user’s point of view. Repeating information, managing gaps between teams, and struggling with digital tools all point to a system that still places far too much responsibility on the individual.

Access’ own Director of Public Sector Marketing, Laura Thompson, built on this by focusing on how services are designed and how technology can better support coordination. Framing care as “a constellation,” she pointed to the reality that people move across mental health, physical health and social care, often without those services moving with them.

Her point about patients having to repeat their story captured something widely recognised across health and social care.

“Having to tell your story again and again is a failure of design in the system.”

When information does not move with the person, continuity breaks down. As she put it, the system needs to be far more conscious of making sure “information follows the person,” particularly if neighbourhood care is going to work in practice. Technology should help address that, but only if it enables services to connect and act together in real time.

She also pointed to the limits of current approaches. Shared care records provide access to information, but often require professionals to go looking for it. The greater opportunity lies in making that information more usable, helping teams understand what has changed and what action is needed.

Her example of using technology to better understand a dementia patient’s routine illustrated how this can lead to more personalised, appropriate care. The underlying principle is that technology should support how people live, not reshape it around existing system constraints.

While much of the day focused on integration and care delivery, this session brought attention to the infrastructure that underpins it all. As the NHS moves further towards digital models of care, cyber resilience becomes increasingly imperative.

The discussion raised questions about whether cyber has been given enough limelight within the 10-Year Plan. There was a shared sense that it remains under-emphasised, despite being fundamental to enabling more connected, data-driven services.

As Director of Health and Communities at BT, Sultan Mahmud, put it: positioning cyber more clearly could help organisations prioritise investment and build the architecture needed to support neighbourhood-based care.

The conversation also highlighted practical challenges. Visibility across social care remains limited, workforce capacity is stretched, and organisations continue to balance investment between maintaining legacy systems and building new ones.

“We need to attract and retain talent and work differently,” as Tony Cobain, Digital Director of MIAA, noted - pointing to the pressure on teams already trying to manage both.

The board weren’t trying to preach a single solution but help the audience understand the role cyber needs to play. Without stronger, more consistent foundations, the landscape for digital transformation risks remaining uneven and rocky.  

The final session we attended brought the conversation back to AI, but in a more grounded and practical way. Rather than focusing on potential, the discussion centred on what it takes to apply AI safely within real clinical workflows.

Group Director of Product and Engineering at The Access Group, Alan Payne, spoke about the friction built into everyday systems and the opportunity to reduce it: “How do we take those silos and turn them horizontal?”

That question echoed across the day. Disconnected systems and duplicated effort continue to shape how care is delivered. AI, in this context, becomes a way to ease that pressure, particularly in areas where processes are repetitive or time-consuming.

He also described how progress tends to happen in reality, saying how “AI finds the use cases that allow you to traverse this and build the trust to move into more complex areas.”

This incremental approach felt important. Rather than trying to transform everything at once, value is built step by step, with trust developing alongside it.

James Woollard, CCIO at Oxleas NHS FT, reinforced the role of culture in making this work, citing that “Embedding AI effectively is about the culture of the organisation.”

Giving teams space to explore new approaches, while maintaining clear guardrails, is key to scaling safely. By the end of the session, AI was positioned not as a quick fix, but as something that needs to be applied carefully, with the right balance of curiosity, control and collaboration.

Away from the sessions, that same sense of focus carried through onto the exhibition floor. The stands this year felt more thoughtful, with a stronger emphasis on how solutions work in practice rather than just what they promise.

At Access, we were proud to showcase our interactive Neighbourhoods Map, which quickly became a natural talking point across both days. It gave us the chance to have some genuinely useful conversations with customers and partners about how neighbourhood care can be delivered in a way that works on the ground.

We also ran two live poll questions on the stand, and the responses lined up closely with what we were hearing throughout the day.

There was a clear focus on improving patient flow and data sharing, while the biggest frustrations centred on disconnected systems and repeated data entry.

Nothing unexpected, but a useful reminder that the core issues haven’t changed from last year. Going forward, we [the sector] still need to establish the best and most efficient way to join things up in a way that works for everyone.

Day One set a strong tone for the event, with a wide range of thoughtful sessions and conversations across the floor. Rewired doesn’t stop there. We’ll be following up with our Day Two highlights real soon, unpacking how these discussions build and the other areas where momentum is starting to gather.