By Chris Barker on January 6, 2026
What 2026 will really demand from organisations like ours.
Everywhere you look, there’s talk of digital-first pathways, AI-enabled decision-making, and remote monitoring at scale. The headlines promise that innovation will finally “fix” healthcare.
If only.
Technology will continue to play a huge role in 2026, but the belief that digital alone will transform the system is neither comforting nor realistic. After years in my role as CEO of Spirit Health building digital services, medicines optimisation programmes, primary-care support models and patient education pathways, one truth stands out more clearly than anything else:
Healthcare only changes when people do. Everything else is just noise
Digital is powerful. Education is powerful. Wrap-around support is powerful. Clear pathways are powerful.
But none of them work in isolation – and none of them work without the human behaviours, processes and simplicity that allow them to take root. Supporting people in effective change management is key.
2026 won’t reward the organisations with the loudest technology claims. It will reward those that make healthcare easier, for patients to navigate and for teams to deliver.
In the UK NHS with a 10-year plan focused on three shifts which makes sense – hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention – it seems we may need to give more thought to the people and teams who lead this change. Those teams are certainly disrupted at the moment.
1. No model succeeds without people and clarity behind it
Whether it’s a new tech platform, a prescribing process or a patient-education programme, the pattern is always the same: something launches with enthusiasm… and then reality arrives.
Ideas rarely fail because they’re bad. They fail because implementation is rushed, pathways are unclear, or the benefits don’t land early enough for people to believe in them.
And often, complexity is the culprit. When steps are messy or expectations vague, people default to what they know. Not out of resistance, but because we haven’t given them something genuinely usable.
Success remains deeply human. It’s built through clarity, early wins, trusted champions inside the system, and the confidence that comes when a new way of working actually makes sense.
At Spirit Health, we’ve seen simple service redesigns outperform sophisticated digital pilots not because the tech was wrong, but because the people and clarity were right.
2. Complexity kills good ideas. Simplicity scales them
Across the NHS and beyond, healthcare has a habit of turning even the simplest improvements into multi-layered projects. We build variation into everything. We create bespoke pathways for every region. We run pilots that never scale.
But patients don’t experience care in bespoke slices. They experience it as one journey. When that journey is simple, predictable and consistent, they engage. When it’s complicated, they disengage.
The same is true for clinicians. Most people are not craving another dashboard. They’re craving a way of working that removes friction, not adds to it. If a new tool genuinely simplifies their day or improves care, they’ll use it. If it doesn’t, no amount of innovation will make it land.
Take EMPOWER, our structured diabetes education programme, as an example. Diabetes teams are busy, and appointment time is limited. When education and support sit alongside clinical care, patients get the space to properly understand their condition, while clinicians are freed up to focus on the decisions that genuinely need clinical expertise. The result is less pressure in appointments – and better use of everyone’s time.
In 2026, real innovation won’t be complexity. It will be the discipline to simplify.
3. Patient empowerment is the only scalable path forward
We’re heading into a future where more people live with more long-term conditions, and fewer professionals are available to support them. No technology on the planet can stretch clinical capacity enough to meet that demand.
But empowered patients can.
Not in the abstract sense, but in the real sense. Confident, informed, and genuinely capable of managing their condition day-to-day, with support when needed. That’s where the real pressure lifts from the system.
A patient who understands their medication, recognises warning signs, and knows what “good” looks like will always fare better with or without digital tools. That takes education, consistency, and simple pathways. The kind of wrap-around support that rarely makes headlines but quietly transforms outcomes at scale.
Patient empowerment isn’t a side activity. It’s the foundation that makes everything else possible.
4. Change still happens one person at a time
Healthcare loves flow charts, frameworks and governance groups. But systems don’t change because a new process appears on a diagram. They change because someone inside the system chooses to work differently.
That choice comes from trust, clarity, and support when things get messy. It comes from listening early, adjusting quickly, and building goodwill instead of burning it through unnecessary complexity.
This is the side of transformation we don’t talk about enough. The humanity of the conversations, the coaching, the reassurance that “this is worth it.”
Every successful digital or clinical programme succeeds because someone cared enough to help people through the messy middle between “launch” and “impact.” That’s the work organisations overlook most and it’s the work that makes everything else succeed.
You see this clearly in our remote patient monitoring programmes using Clinitouch. The technology matters, but it’s rarely the deciding factor. What makes these services work are the clinical champions and delivery teams behind the scenes – the people who help services adapt when reality doesn’t follow the original plan.
Not every project is linear. What matters is having a partner who understands the real blockers, simplifies decisions, and helps teams make practical changes they can actually sustain. When people feel supported through change, small improvements stack up quickly – and that’s where genuine system impact comes from.
5. The opportunity for 2026: joined-up simplicity
The future isn’t digital-first or analogue-first. It’s people-first, supported by whatever tools and services help them thrive.
The organisations that thrive in 2026 will be those that simplify care across multiple fronts not just one:
- Simpler digital tools
- Simpler prescribing and medicines processes
- Simpler education journeys
- Simpler communication
- Simpler pathways
- Simpler evidence of impact
Patients want to feel cared for and whilst this may sometimes present itself as being about seeing a GP, there is a wide eco-system of support. What matters is that they feel connected to their clinical team and that the whole experience works together in a coherent, simple way.
2026 will reward the organisations brave enough to reduce, refine and simplify not add more complexity disguised as progress.
So, the real question for 2026 is this…
Are we building systems that make healthcare easier, or just systems that sound clever?
Because the future of healthcare is not about sounding the most sophisticated.
It is about the best clarity.
Healthcare doesn’t need more noise. It needs simplicity, humanity and joined-up thinking backed by technology, but never defined by it.
And the sooner we stop chasing silver bullets and start designing systems people can actually use, the faster we’ll see the improvements everyone is desperate for.
In 2026, leadership means helping people to have the courage to stop doing what no longer helps, start doing what does, keep doing what already works and support these changes. That’s where real innovation lives.
