Key takeaways

• Digital transformation should be measured by whether it gives patients more control, clearer information and a stronger voice in their care
• Trust in the UK’s National Health Service data use will depend on transparency, visible safeguards and practical tools that let patients manage consent and access
• The biggest opportunity is not just digitizing services, but making care more responsive, coordinated and human

Anatomy of Success: Digitising the NHS by 2035 was launched during a panel discussion in Parliament, where speakers explored the report’s findings and the future of NHS digitization

The case for digitizing public sector health services is often framed in terms of efficiency, modernization and productivity. Those things matter. But the bigger opportunity is more human than technical.

At its best, digital transformation can help the public sector health services like the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) deliver on one of its founding ideals: making patients heard, understood and supported in ways that feel timely, connected and personal.

As the Fabian Society and HCLTech argue in Anatomy of Success: Digitising the NHS by 2035, the real goal is not digitization for its own sake. It is to build a health service that is more responsive to ordinary people, more capable of anticipating need and better able to deliver care when, where and how patients need it.

“Digitization delivers its greatest value when it strengthens the relationship between patients and the health system. As this report makes clear, the priority is not simply to digitize services, but to give patients more visibility, more control and more confidence in how care is delivered,” said Arjun Sethi, Chief Growth Officer, Public Sector and Strategic Segments, HCLTech.

That ambition was captured clearly during the report’s launch at the Houses of Parliament. Sasjkia Otto, Senior Researcher at the Fabian Society and author of the report, described the founding vision of the NHS as one to “put a megaphone to the mouth of every patient,” adding that new technologies now have the potential to do that “in ways that the founders of the NHS couldn’t even have begun to imagine.”

That is the lens through which NHS and public sector healthcare digitization should now be viewed. Not as a technology program, but as a patient voice program.

Why patient voice has become the real test of modernization

The report highlights that too many NHS patients still struggle to have their needs met. Complaints are rising, administrative failures are putting people off seeking care and many patients who experience poor care don’t pursue it further because they doubt anything will change.

The scale of that disconnect is significant: the report highlights record compensation payments of nearly £3 billion, or 1.7% of the NHS budget, while 56% of people who experienced poor care took no further action and 42% of those who encountered administrative problems said it put them off seeking care in future.

That matters because the problem is not just access. It is responsiveness. A modern health system should not ask people to repeat their story to multiple services, chase basic information or navigate disconnected systems at their most vulnerable moments. It should reduce friction, not add to it.

This is why the report’s central framing is so strong. Technology can help give patients greater control over their care, but only if it improves the lived experience of healthcare. The point is not simply to digitize paper processes. It is to create services that are more connected, more intuitive and more able to act before problems escalate.

Otto made that case directly at the launch, arguing that the NHS needs to “adopt a solutions-focused mindset” and ask what it would take to “deliver for patients.”

From digital access to patient control

One of the report’s clearest strengths is that it moves beyond general claims about innovation and identifies where digital can make a practical difference.

The first is patient control. The NHS app already points in that direction, with features such as digital appointment management and prescription tracking. The next step is much bigger: a single patient record that gives patients and clinicians a shared view of care needs and, crucially, allows people to manage how their information is used.

That matters because trust and control are inseparable. The report suggests that communication is already lagging behind policy ambition: 61% of people mistakenly believe a single patient record already exists and 57% don’t recall ever receiving information about the data in their records.

Patients broadly understand that data is essential to modern healthcare, yet major initiatives have still failed when people felt shut out or insufficiently protected. In other words, public support for data use is real, but it is not unconditional.

The panel returned to that point repeatedly. Otto argued that the system must communicate the life-saving benefits of technology more clearly while also “put[ting] patients in control and creat[ing] greater transparency around data use.” She pointed to the potential of the single patient record to let people understand, manage and control data use directly through the NHS app.

That is the right direction. If the next phase of digitization is meant to deepen trust, then transparency can’t be an afterthought. It must be part of the product.

Life-saving data use must feel tangible to the public

The report’s first priority is to champion life-saving data use. It doesn’t treat data as a compliance issue or a backend asset. It treats it as infrastructure for better care.

That urgency was echoed during the panel by Alex McIntyre, UK Member of Parliament for Gloucester, who argued that the NHS holds data on an extraordinary scale and that “we don’t use it enough,” adding that the challenge is not only to collect data but to use it well.

The report points to the National Immunisation Management System as an example of what happens when data use is clearly connected to public value. During the pandemic, extensive patient records were linked and used to prioritize vaccinations and invite people to appointments. The public could see the purpose and the benefit, which helped create trust and buy-in.

Otto made the same point at the launch. Referring to the vaccination rollout, she said public support was possible because “people could immediately see what the benefits were.”

That may be one of the most important lessons in the report. Trust is not built by asking people to accept abstraction. It is built by showing clearly how digital improves outcomes, shortens delays, reduces repetition and helps services act earlier.

A more human NHS is not a less digital NHS

One of the more useful ideas in the report is that digital should make care more human, not less. That matters because debates about healthcare technology can too easily become polarized between digital progress on one side and personal care on the other.

The better question is whether digital gives clinicians more time for human care and helps the system target personal support where it matters most.

The report describes how analytics can identify higher-need patients, while remote care, monitoring tools and connected systems can improve access and reduce pressure. But it is equally clear that not every need should be met through digital channels alone. Digital exclusion is still significant.

The report notes that 1.8 million people in the UK don’t use the internet at home or elsewhere, while about 18.5 million are narrow internet users, underlining why digital access alone can’t be treated as a proxy for inclusion. Some patients require reassurance, dialogue and in-person care. Others may be digitally confident in general life and still find health services hard to use in moments of stress or illness.

In this environment, the strongest models combine scale with sensitivity. The report highlights the NHS app team’s use of both face-to-face engagement and continuous digital feedback to understand what patients need. It also points to examples where data was used to identify vulnerable patients who were then proactively offered in-person support.

That is where digitization becomes more than a channel shift. It becomes a way of matching support to need.

Interoperability is ultimately a patient experience issue

Interoperability can sound like a technical procurement problem. In reality, it is a patient experience problem.

When systems don’t work together, patients repeat the same details across different services. Clinicians don’t have the full picture. Families spend time coordinating care manually. Support arrives late. The burden shifts from the system onto the individual.

The report’s fifth priority, making services work as one, recognizes that connected care will depend on standards, infrastructure and stronger accountability across institutions. It cites the London Care Record as an example of how shared information can reduce duplication and improve coordination across services.

That point was brought to life in the panel discussion. Sarah Russell, UK Member of Parliament for Congleton, described a hospice example in which better information sharing meant ambulance teams could understand a terminally ill patient’s wishes and avoid unnecessary interventions that would have led to a poorer end-of-life experience. She called the impact “absolutely transformational.”

This is a useful reminder that interoperability is not really about systems talking to systems. It is about enabling services to respond to people as whole patients.

The next chapter must be built around trust, clarity and outcomes

The NHS and other public sector healthcare services can’t afford digitization that is expensive, fragmented or detached from lived experience. Nor can it afford to let caution harden into paralysis. The report’s message is more balanced than either of those extremes. It acknowledges the risks. It also insists that the cost of inaction is real.

The case for getting this right is not only experiential but operational: the report notes that highly digitized NHS Trusts have 13% lower cost per admitted patient episode and a 5% shorter average inpatient stay.

The most persuasive way forward is to treat digital transformation as a practical route to better patient voice, better coordination and better care. That means being honest about safeguards, designing around inclusion, giving people visible control over how their data is used and making sure the benefits show up in experiences patients can feel.

If the next decade of NHS digitization succeeds, it will not be because the system adopted more technology. It will be because it used technology to make patients more visible, more informed and more heard.

Or, as the report’s founding idea puts it, because it finally gave every patient a megaphone.

Download the full report here: https://fabians.org.uk/publication/anatomy-of-success/