By Chris Barker on July 7, 2025
Our mission to Make Health Easy is more relevant than ever.
A quick summary of ‘Fit for the Future’
The new NHS 10-Year Plan recognises stark realities: waiting lists remain high, health outcomes lag international comparators, inequalities persist, and our workforce is under immense strain. It rightly calls this a “critical condition.”
There are three big shifts that everyone is talking about:
- From hospital to community: building a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’, more care at home, expanding pharmacy, dentistry, mental health hubs, and trying to end the scramble for GP slots.
- From analogue to digital: NHS App as the ‘front door’ to the NHS, AI, genomics, wearables, personal health budgets, remote monitoring, and even ‘HealthStore’ for approved digital tools.
- From sickness to prevention: tackling smoking, obesity, alcohol, driving new screening, personal incentives for health, and broad partnerships with tech, life sciences and local government.
However, while the vision is compelling, there is no current delivery plan. Many commitments are long-term, stretching beyond 2035, and echo earlier aspirations from previous administrations – though this time with digital scale.
Opportunities to work together – and key challenges
1. Moving care from hospitals to homes
This shift aligns strongly with Spirit’s work at scale in remote monitoring and virtual wards (Clinitouch), and medicines optimisation. Our services help reduce avoidable admissions, support integrated pathways and keep people well at home – essential for sustainable NHS finances and patient experience. Our work in the UK and internationally brings an alternative perspective along with deep clinical insight from delivering services in the NHS every day.
2. The digital and data acceleration
The ambition to be the world’s most AI-enabled, data-driven health system means digital self-management, wearables, genomics and remote monitoring will be core NHS infrastructure. This is an opportunity for providers like Spirit to bring proven tools and innovations from our long-term conditions and Pharmacy to digital weight management and Clinitouch. National platforms and procurements can work well – we need to ensure this gets the best for patients and does not stifle innovation.
3. Paying for outcomes, not just activity
The plan signals a clear move towards value-based models: paying for demonstrable improvements in population health and rewarding services that achieve the best outcomes. For providers, this means robust data, independent evaluations and transparency on real-world results will be critical to secure contracts and ensure services deliver for both patients and the taxpayer. Our published outcomes over more than 10 years demonstrate our seriousness about evidence-based care.
4. Greater local autonomy and diverse contracting
Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and place-based partnerships will have more say over priorities and budgets. New models like Integrated Health Organisations are emerging. This could mean more tailored local commissioning – where trusted relationships and flexibility matter. It also brings risks of fragmentation that will need careful management to ensure consistency, equity and quality. How this will be balanced with national procurement is one to watch.
5. Tackling obesity and prevention at scale
The plan’s ambitious “moonshot” on obesity, alongside targeted incentives and partnerships for healthy behaviours, signals a new focus on prevention. The NHS should be looking for the best outcomes per pound with a focus on longer term outcomes. Providers must be ready to demonstrate not just engagement, but measurable improvements in health, equity and NHS system savings.
The road ahead
This plan confirms the trajectory: more care in the community, more digital, more emphasis on prevention and outcomes, and less reliance on hospital-centric models. There is more to come on exactly how this will be delivered, and Spirit was created to support precisely these ambitions – blending Clinitouch, EMPOWER, Medicines Optimisation and Pharmacy to help the NHS deliver better outcomes, sustainably, close to home.
We’ll continue to align our models with local and national priorities, bring robust data to prove impact, and ensure we remain an agile partner as policy and funding frameworks evolve. We are ready to work with ICBs, Trusts and Providers, National Policy Leaders and local systems to help turn this vision into reality.
Together, we can keep finding new ways to Make Health Easy – supporting the NHS to meet its goals for patients, staff and taxpayers.
