10 Year Health Plan for England released

On July 3, 2025, the UK Government published the 10 Year Health Plan for England as part of its mission to build a health service fit for the future. It sets out how the government will reinvent the NHS through three radical shifts - hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. These will be the core components of a new care model. 

This transition will be supported by: a new NHS operating model to enable a more diverse and devolved health service, improved transparency of care quality, a redesigned workforce model aligned with the reform agenda, a focus on innovation to power transformation, and improved productivity supported by a new financial foundation.

Key reforms to the NHS operating model include:

• Merging the NHS and Department of Health and Social Care headquarters, reducing central staffing by 50%;
• Positioning Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) as strategic commissioners of local healthcare services;
• Modernising the foundation trust (FT) model so that by 2035 every NHS provider becomes an FT with greater autonomy and reinvestment powers;
• Piloting Integrated Health Organisations (IHOs) to manage local health budgets, with the first becoming operational by 2027 and expanding over time.

"Powering Transformation" chapter outlines current challenges and barriers to the adoption and spread of innovations across the NHS. It proposes five transformative technologies (5 big bets) with the potential to accelerate healthcare reform and secure the financial sustainability of the NHS over the next decade: data, AI, genomics, wearables, and robotics.

• High-quality, interoperable data will underpin all innovations, feeding into AI algorithms, genomic research, and wearable insights;
• AI will reduce administrative burdens, empower patients, interpret genomic data, and enhance the effectiveness of diagnostics and robotics. By 2035, AI will be integrated into most clinical pathways, and generative AI tools will be widely adopted;
• Genomics and predictive analytics will enable personalised and preemptive care strategies, integrated with AI, wearables, or even robotic systems, as well as care teams. Through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, a unified genomic record will be developed, integrating patient genomic data with relevant clinical and diagnostic data in near real-time. A digital Test Directory of national tests will be introduced;
• Wearables will bring the insights from data, AI, and genomics directly to the patient or clinician, enabling continuous monitoring, pre-emptive interventions, and more personal care delivery. Wearable devices and biosensors will be connected to the NHS App and integrated into the Single Patient Record. By 2035, wearables will be routine in preventative, chronic, and post-acute NHS treatment;
• Robotics, already transforming surgery, will expand into patient support and rehabilitation. From 2026, surgical robot adoption will increase in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. A national registry for robotic surgery data and telesurgery networks will be developed by 2029.

Regional Health Innovation Zones will be introduced to support more radical and forward-looking innovation. These zones will allow regions to experiment with new models for commissioning, pathway redesign, and procurement, involving ICBs, providers, industry, and local leadership. Two to three regions with strong health and life sciences ecosystems will be selected initially, with plans to expand nationally.

From April 2026, the NICE technology appraisal process will be expanded to devices, diagnostics, and digital technologies, with approved products receiving mandatory NHS funding. NICE will also be given a new role in identifying which outdated technologies and therapies can be removed from the NHS to free up resources for investment in more effective ones.

A new "Innovator passport" will be introduced over the next two years. It will allow medical technologies that have been robustly assessed by one NHS organisation to be adopted by others without repeated compliance checks. This aims to eliminate bureaucratic duplication, enabling faster uptake of innovations and reducing variation in access to new treatments..

Financial reforms will incentivise innovation, support the flow of money from hospital to community, and reward best practice across the NHS. The key proposed changes are:

• Multi-year budgets to support long-term financial planning. Organisations are asked to prepare robust and realistic 5-year financial plans;
• Block contracts, where providers are paid regardless of the number of patients seen or the quality of care delivered, will be phased out. Instead, funding from ICBs will be aligned with actual activity and outcomes. Payments will be withheld for poor-quality care, while high-quality care will be rewarded with financial bonuses;
• Providers will be incentivized to focus on the most clinically and cost-effective care. Starting 2026/27, the NHS will begin moving from national tariffs based on average costs to tariffs based on best clinical practice that maximises productivity and outcomes. The transition will begin with services with sufficiently detailed, clinically evidenced delivery models to calculate costs. The number of new best practice tariffs will expand annually;
• Organizations will be required to reserve at least 3% of their annual spend for one-time investments in service transformation to help translate innovations into practice more rapidly;
• The Year of Care Payments (YCPs) will be tested to drive the shift of activity and resource from hospital to community, starting in 2026/27. Each YCP may cover a full spectrum of services, including primary care, community health services, mental health, specialist outpatient care, emergency attendances, and hospital admissions, consolidated into a single payment. Local NHS organisations will benefit financially from reducing emergency demand and reinvesting in proactive, preventative care;
• Capital regime reforms will simplify and accelerate capital funding processes.

See the full details here.

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