Personalised care is central to the NHS Long Term Plan, but despite years of discussion about person-centred care and independent living, these aims are still not fully realised.
This article was written by Mark Hindle, UK and Ireland Managing Director at Tunstall Healthcare
Despite the Care Act 2014 making personalisation a legal duty, we still discuss it as if it is a future ambition rather than a practical reality. The question now is how we turn principle into practice. How do we make personalisation real within everyday health and care delivery? And what part can technology play in that shift?
Learning from the past
It is worth reminding ourselves why personalisation matters. It is not only about dignity, choice and respect, though all are vital. It is also about enabling proactive and preventative care. When we do not understand an individual’s specific needs, we miss opportunities to intervene early and reduce risk.
The UK has a long history of trying to embed personalisation. For example, the Putting People First protocol was announced in 2007, which introduced personal budgets, and the Better Care Fund was created in 2013 with the aim of integrating health and social care. Each step has moved us forward, but not far enough. Cuts and fragmentation have held back progress, and personalisation has too often been treated as a policy slogan rather than a system design principle.
What is different today is the understanding that personalisation is not an end in itself. It is a means to prevention and better outcomes, the foundation of a more sustainable care model.
What is different now
The biggest change is technology and our ability to integrate it seamlessly into people’s homes.
Telecare itself is not new. What has changed is how digital solutions connect and share data across care settings. The analogue-to-digital transition allows for more flexible, secure and responsive connections, opening the door to early alerts, predictive insights and richer integration with health, care and housing systems.
That creates an opportunity to redesign care around prevention and personalisation, rather than around crisis. This shift will depend on how well we use the infrastructure already in place and how we connect formal care systems with the everyday technologies people already choose for themselves.
Voice assistants, smart sensors, wearables and connected lighting are now part of daily life. Integrating these tools safely into care pathways, where appropriate and consented, can help extend independence and create a more natural relationship between citizens and services. It is about using technology people trust, rather than asking them to adapt to something entirely new.
The potential is not just technical, but cultural. When citizens are active participants in managing their own wellbeing, supported by information that is shared, transparent and locally governed, we begin to move away from the idea of ‘services done to people’ and towards ‘care designed with people.’ This shift in mindset is as important as any digital infrastructure we build.
A shift in thinking
To see what this means in practice, consider Jean, aged 83, who lives alone in sheltered housing and has mild heart failure. She values her independence and enjoys tending her garden each morning. Recently, her activity monitoring system detected a change in her usual routine. A wellbeing call identified dizziness, and a responder attended the same day. Her GP reviewed her medication, preventing a potential health crisis.
Without that real-time insight, based on her unique routine, Jean could easily have ended up in hospital. It was the local, integrated approach, combining data, human contact and context, that made the difference.
Understanding how personalisation, integration and place-based care fit together is essential if we are serious about changing outcomes at scale. The NHS’ neighbourhood and place-based plans reinforce this shift, recognising that the most effective care is rooted in local networks that combine clinical, social and digital resources. These plans show how neighbourhood teams, community organisations and data-enabled housing partners can together form a complete ecosystem of support, focused on prevention and continuity rather than escalation.
Crucially, this approach demands shared data and shared responsibility. It requires professionals across housing, health and care to access and act on the same information, building a picture that is holistic, timely and personal. Data alone will not deliver personalisation, but without it the system remains reactive.
Charting a path forward
The opportunity is clear. Technology and data can make personalisation real, but only if they are part of a coordinated system effort. None of this can happen in isolation or at pilot scale.
It will take sustained political will, funding and leadership to make personalisation mainstream rather than marginal. The King’s Fund has long argued that progress depends on tackling the ‘hierarchy of care,’ which places hospitals above community and primary services.
If we can shift that mindset, and use technology as the bridge between services and citizens, we can finally turn personalisation from principle into practice and make prevention, not reaction, the organising principle of care.
The tools already exist: connected homes, responsive data and communities ready to play a more active role. The challenge now is to align policy, commissioning and delivery so that personalised care becomes the rule, not the exception. That is how we can honour both the intent of the Care Act and the promise of the NHS Long Term Plan, building a future where people are supported to live the lives they choose, safely and independently, for longer.
Images: Shutterstock
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