Adult Social Care Digital Transformation Must Be Central to NHS Reform, Says techUK
A new white paper from techUK is calling for adult social care to be placed at the centre of future NHS reform, arguing that the digital technologies needed to support a more preventative, community-based health and care system are already available and being successfully used across the sector.
The report, Why Digital Adult Social Care Transformation is Central to the Future of the NHS, was launched at the 2026 techUK CareTech Conference and developed through the organisation’s Social Care Working Group. The event featured keynote addresses from Stephen Kinnock and Isaac Samuels.
The paper focuses on the NHS 10-Year Plan’s three key priorities: shifting care from hospitals into communities, moving from analogue to digital services, and placing greater emphasis on prevention rather than treatment. According to techUK, achieving these ambitions will depend heavily on the role of adult social care, which already supports people in their homes and local communities at scale.
The report highlights a range of established technologies that are already helping to deliver these objectives, including predictive monitoring systems, interoperable care records, artificial intelligence-enabled decision support tools and digital telecare solutions.
However, it argues that the main challenge is no longer technological capability but system-wide coordination.
Among the barriers identified are fragmented commissioning arrangements, inconsistent data standards, duplication in assurance processes, limited interoperability and a lack of shared accountability across health, social care, government and industry.
Importantly, the paper suggests that significant progress can be made without waiting for major structural reforms or additional funding settlements. Instead, it recommends making better use of existing resources by redirecting and pooling current funding streams. These include NHS prevention budgets, the Better Care Fund and Section 75 partnership arrangements, enabling investment to reach services that can deliver the greatest preventative impact.
The publication comes at a time when several major programmes and reforms are progressing simultaneously, including the NHS 10-Year Plan, the Casey Commission, local government reorganisation, the national transition from analogue to digital telecare, and wider interoperability initiatives. The paper warns that these developments risk advancing in isolation unless greater efforts are made to align them.
Drawing on practical examples from across the sector, the report features case studies and deployment evidence from a range of organisations, including Kyndi, Lilli, Medway Council, Aico, Selwood Housing, Archangel, Bield Housing and Care, Rethink Partners, Royal Borough of Greenwich, The Access Group, Derbyshire County Council, CoolCare, Ally Cares and System C working with Suffolk County Council. The report also includes contributions from Civica and Tunstall Healthcare.
The white paper concludes with a series of recommendations for national government, local authorities, strategic authorities, the NHS, Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).
Among the immediate actions proposed for ministers are the introduction of minimum interoperability standards for adult social care based on open APIs, ensuring that existing prevention funding can be used for service redesign as well as technology adoption, and moving towards a single, proportionate assurance framework recognised across key regulatory and compliance bodies.
The report argues that such a framework would reduce duplication and administrative burdens for suppliers, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, while accelerating innovation across the sector.
techUK says the social care sector is ready to play a leading role in delivering the NHS’s long-term ambitions and that the opportunity now lies in aligning policy, funding and implementation to make the most of technologies that are already proving their value in practice.
