The NHS must recognise a new era of healthcare, with more people
turning to private providers, direct-to-consumer services and AI
tools for advice and self-management, a new report by The King's
Fund says.
The analysis, titled ‘Is the NHS ready for the
AI-powered patient' stems from a roundtable the think-tank
conducted earlier this year with NHS leaders, technology
developers, patient representatives, clinicians and policymakers.
They discussed what direct-to-consumer care means for the NHS and
how the health service can adapt, with the report setting out a
series of recommendations.
The report highlights the need to respond to a world where more
people will increasingly receive a combination of NHS care,
private services, workplace support, digital tools and AI advice.
In this new model, people flow in and out of interactions with
the NHS, carrying a partially complete collection of tests and
information from various sources, including consumer technologies
like wearables and use AI tools for things like symptom
checking, managing long term conditions, and understanding future
health risks.
The work argues that given the pace of change, the health service
will need to do more work on understanding how consumer-led AI
innovations will complement, replace or add to the activity the
NHS already does. Participants in the roundtable suggested that
rather than driving unnecessary consultations and widening
inequalities, AI-innovations have the potential to support more
prevention-focussed services and to reach people who find it
difficult to access health services.
To embrace this 'new dawn' of the consumer health revolution the
report recommends that the consistent separation of physical and
digital services in the NHS needs to be corrected. One way to
tackle this, the report suggests is through reforming
multi-disciplinary teams where appropriate to ensure that they
encompass both physical and digital services that are wrapped
around the patient, not anchored in an organisation's historical
way of thinking.
Pritesh Mistry, author of the analysis and Fellow for
Digital Technologies at The King's Fund, said:
'The proliferation of direct-to-consumer services such as AI are
fundamentally changing how the health and care system operates
and how people interact with it. People no longer rely on a
single front door for health advice and care. The NHS needs to
recognise this new dawn and respond to it, or risk being left
behind as patients become more frustrated with their disconnected
care experiences and poor health outcomes.
‘We need to have a clearer strategy for how consumer-facing AI
innovations can help turn our health service into the
prevention-focussed sector the government says it wants. The
priority now should be making sure care can be more joined-up
around people. Steps like reforming multi-disciplinary teams to
ensure they span digital and physical services would be good
first step in recognising this changing landscape and reflecting
a more modern healthcare system.'
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
A copy of The King's Fund report: ‘Is the NHS ready for the
AI-powered patient'. In February 2026, The King's Fund
convened a roundtable with NHS leaders, technology developers,
patient representatives, clinicians and policymakers to discuss
what direct-to-consumer care means for the NHS.
The King's Fund previous work on innovation in
medtech: Innovation, Economic
Growth, Medtech, And The NHS: From Strategy To Delivery | The
King's Fund.
