Why digital adult social care transformation is central to the future of the NHS

This white paper by techUK outlines why adult social care must sit at the heart of NHS reform and how the technology to deliver it is already here.

The paper argues that the NHS 10-Year Plan's three strategic shifts, hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention, all depend on what happens in people's homes and neighbourhoods, where adult social care already operates at scale. The technologies needed to support that shift, predictive monitoring, interoperable records, AI-enabled decision support and digital telecare, are mature and already deployed. What is missing, the paper argues, is the coordination layer around them: aligned commissioning, consolidated data standards, joined-up assurance, stronger interoperability, a shared accountability and integrated approach across health, housing, care, government and industry.

With a host of practical examples, including Bield Housing and Care in Scotland – a TAPPI testbed site - and several other references to housing, the paper makes the case that much can be further acted on now. It calls for existing money to be redirected and pooled more effectively, through NHS prevention funding, the Better Care Fund and Section 75 flexibilities, so prevention investment reaches the parts of the system where it delivers the greatest impact.

It concludes with clear, action-oriented recommendations for national government, local authorities, strategic authorities, the NHS, ICSs and ICBs, and sets out the principles on which industry stands ready to engage. Among the immediate steps the paper identifies for Ministers are mandating minimum interoperability standards for adult social care built on open APIs, making existing prevention funding explicitly available for service redesign as well as technology, and moving towards a single, proportionate assurance regime recognised across CQC, DTAC, DSPT and MHRA to reduce duplication for suppliers, particularly SMEs.