By Nick Wilson, CEO of System C
As we enter 2026, artificial intelligence has now moved beyond the hype cycle.
The question is no longer whether AI will transform health and social care, it’s when, and whether we’ll deploy it swiftly and wisely – or will we waste the time patients and public finances can’t afford on point solutions that sound good in boardrooms but fail at the bedside.
I believe three fundamental shifts will define this year, but they’ll only succeed if we’re honest about the hard choices ahead.
First, ambient AI will become standard for clinical documentation.
Voice-enabled consultation capture will free clinicians from screens and return their focus to patients. This isn’t a luxury, it’s essential.
But the reality is that homogenous AI solutions that aim to be good enough across many tasks aren’t acceptable in health and social care. We need depth, not breadth.
Clinical workflows aren’t generic workflows, and accuracy isn’t negotiable.
When errors don’t just reduce efficiency but affect outcomes, liability and patient safety, specialist AI built for health and care contexts will deliver clearer ROI and genuine adoption.
Second, we’ll see integrated AI solutions replace bolt-on tools, with intelligence embedded directly into EPRs and case management systems.
This matters because we need systems that work and recent headlines remind us how badly things go wrong when they don’t.
Failed implementations running over time and budget, hospitals unable to report basic data, trusts left in crisis.
Where’s the accountability?
Jim Mackey’s push to personally sign off on EPR implementations recognises this crisis. We can’t afford yet more expensive failures in the national and health press.
Even when AI works brilliantly in isolation, if clinicians are cutting and pasting outputs back into core systems, we’ve fundamentally missed the point and added unnecessary risk and time.
That’s not digital transformation; it’s adding another manual step. True integration means AI capabilities living inside the workflows clinicians already use, not alongside them.
With precious funding, there must be demonstrable use cases that vendors and trusts are held accountable to deliver.
The standardisation paradox
This brings us to the tension at the heart of digital transformation across health and social care. National bodies rightly push for standard platforms, shared records and interoperability.
Meanwhile, trusts, ICSs, councils and providers need local flexibility to meet real-world needs. Both sides are right, and both are frustrated.
Is national standardisation slowing frontline innovation? Yes.
Nick Wilson
The NHS in particular can suffer from ‘pilot-itus’ – pilots run in isolation, making it impossible to prove value at scale.
Those wanting to drive incremental innovation face barriers that shouldn’t exist. Yet without standards, we risk fragmentation that undermines the very continuity of care we’re trying to achieve.
In comparison, we have seen Local Authorities progressing much more quickly and already delivering tangible cash releasing and non-cash releasing benefits – while improving the quality of care at the same time.
Making the hard (?) choices
At some point, we must choose what we do and what we don’t do across the health and social care. Unpopular but necessary decisions lie ahead.
The organisations that will succeed in 2026 are those investing in British-built AI solutions designed specifically for NHS and UK social care infrastructure, ensuring data sovereignty while supporting local innovation that scales.
Better able to support local needs and simultaneously supporting the flywheel of the British economy which we need to thrive to afford our care system. What’s not to like about that.
The challenge isn’t whether to adopt AI.
It’s how to deploy it responsibly at scale and pace, maintaining human connection at the heart of care while eliminating the admin burden that prevents professionals from doing what they do best.
2026 will be remembered either as the year we got serious about making technology serve care, or the year we continued investing in solutions that look impressive in presentations but fail in practice and don’t deliver ROI.
The choice is ours so let’s choose wisely.
