On 3 July, the government published its 10-year health plan to radically transform the NHS in England, with the paper declaring that “the NHS now stands at an existential brink”.
We hear about the crippling challenges currently facing the NHS in abundance. Patients struggling to get GP appointments, ballooning waiting lists, demoralised and demotivated staff, and then added complexities associated with the broader trends of demographic change and an ageing population.
This existential threat is further highlighted by the growing number of people turning to private healthcare because they cannot access the care they need through the NHS. The plan demands change to limit those opting to go private and then “wonder why they pay so much tax for a service they do not use”.
It’s a shift that doesn’t just reflect increasing demand, particularly in areas like mental health, but also risks undermining the very foundation of the NHS as a universal, publicly funded service. The need for private care as a means of relieving pressure on the system is a trend we’ve observed first hand among our customers, and one that underscores just how critical it is to address the pressures facing the NHS before its role is fundamentally changed.
Public or private aside, it’s indisputable that services are being hampered by a lack of automation, obsolete IT hardware and technology, and inefficient workflows. There is an urgent need to upgrade existing devices and ensure they are compatible with the latest operating systems and can integrate newer forms of technology like AI. Otherwise, innovation will stall and staff will continue to get bogged down ‘fixing’ tech issues.
Already battling these issues, increasing demand is placing an added strain on these existing IT systems and, more specifically, exposing a severe lack of interoperability.
If systems don’t communicate with one another, constant manual data entry means staff work longer hours and burn out, while poor data visibility often leaves patient information locked within individual clinics, leading to repeated procedures and unnecessary costs. Patient care and treatment is ultimately at risk.
“Staff and patients are crying out for change,” the plan declares, and radically improving interoperability is the essential component of this much-needed transformation
A system in need of radical modernisation
The challenges faced by the NHS are no secret, but the statistics paint a pretty damning picture for a lack of interoperability being a fundamental cause of them. Research by the British Medical Association (BMA), for example, estimates that around 13.5 million working hours are lost annually in NHS England due to inadequate IT systems and equipment.
In particular, this BMA research revealed “a lack of interoperability affects the quality, timeliness and safety of care that patients receive”, with 82% of doctors surveyed reporting “delays occur ‘always’ or ‘very often’ in accessing data from secondary care”. And the electronic patient record (EPR) systems at the core of this aren’t fit for purpose either: a 2023 British Medical Journal survey strikingly found that the majority of NHS Trusts are still using paper notes.
These issues persist, even today. A new 2025 poll of 1,000 UK public sector workers, including 242 NHS staff, revealed 95% face process inefficiencies in delivering services. Unsurprisingly, one of the top reported obstacles was “a need to access multiple legacy systems to review or enter the same information”.
Inefficient and siloed systems are leaving staff drowning in admin and working longer hours, a problem compounded by the lack of visibility that arises from fragmented record-keeping. In turn, patients are forced to redo paperwork again and again to rectify the error of their information not being where it should be.
It’s time healthcare caught up with other sectors
Poor interoperability is a problem that persists in many sectors but it’s one that many have managed to tackle with real success. Open banking, for example, has fuelled innovation by enabling users to seamlessly connect their bank accounts, make transfers and view account information in one place, all while improving security and empowering users. We’ve seen firsthand how the use of this secure API technology and platform integrations is now achieving a similar impact in healthcare.
It’s not blue-sky thinking to say that both NHS Trusts and the private sector stand to gain exponentially from mirroring the success of interoperability in sectors like finance. To achieve this ambition, system connectivity, openness and data liquidity are integral.
Whether its electronic health records (EHR), appointment booking applications, HR platforms or payment systems, building an interconnected network of systems means healthcare providers can share all this vital data to staff in a unified location and automate key workflows. Not only this, but they can gain insights into financial, operational and patient data too, driving meaningful improvements in strategy and process change.
The plan’s ambitions for AI rely on data
So much of the hype in the 10-year plan centres on using AI to improve efficiency. It calls for AI to become “every nurse’s and doctor’s trusted assistant, saving them time and supporting them in decision making”, and outlines the goal of turning the NHS into “the most AI-enabled health system in the world, with AI seamlessly integrated into clinical pathways”.
This move is essential, and rightly ambitious. But AI is only as good as the data it has access to. It becomes powerful with the right context and this relies on it being able to pull all of the necessary information irrespective of the system in which it was originally captured.
If the NHS doesn’t progress its tech, doctors will find ways to move forward on their own – and that comes with its own consequences. There are doctors already using AI scribe tools in the NHS that aren’t officially registered for medical use. Without proper regulation, tech use in healthcare quickly becomes the Wild West: unregulated systems with unfettered access to patient data increases the risk of errors, data breaches and more.
Essentially, with interoperability, the ability to innovate and integrate new technologies opens up massively. Implementing the correct processes, workflows and training staff on how to use systems is paramount to interoperability’s success, but having a connected IT network makes driving innovation far easier.
Less talk, more action
The publication of the 10-year plan marks a pivotal moment for transforming NHS England to meet the demands of today’s world. Underscoring many of healthcare’s challenges is a fragmented IT network, which fuels rising admin workloads, overburdened staff, and inefficient care processes. As the population grows and life expectancy increases, these problems will only intensify.
The adoption of modern technologies and interoperable systems therefore holds game-changing potential for the public sector. We’ve already seen how connecting systems and transforming data access for staff and patients has revolutionised the private sector. There’s no reason the NHS can’t achieve the same.
The plan also promises a move towards decentralised care. The benefits of a community-led model are clear: less pressure on hospitals, more accessible care, more continuous support for those who need it.
But crucially, it means interoperability cannot be considered optional. It’s critical to making the model work. When care is distributed across multiple settings, only a connected system can ensure that information flows with the patient. Without it, decentralisation risks creating new silos rather than solving old ones.
Technology continues to advance at a relentless pace and the NHS must keep up to achieve its ambitions for the next decade – interoperability is at the very heart of this change. The technology already exists and so it’s not just about a technical upgrade, what’s needed now is the mindset to make meaningful progress and build a healthcare system that works today and years into the future.
By Christoph Lippuner, CEO and co-founder Semble