The Digital Healthcare Council welcomes the commitment to improving patient outcomes, set out in DHSC’s ‘Our plan for patients’. We particularly support efforts to optimise patient flow, empower patients across systems, and give people better access to general practice – ambitions which our members are helping to deliver around the UK.

While we hope this plan will be an important step towards unlocking today’s healthcare challenges, we must make sure we do not lose sight of the opportunity of digital transformation and the power of new technology.

Our ambition for digital must be far higher than simply providing patient records and using routing to support telephone call handling, which are highlighted in today’s plan. We must continue to think big and increase uptake of transformative new technologies that can truly revolutionise the experience of patients and drive improvements in system efficiencies.