Written by Kate Isbey,
Feb 25, 2026
In the NHS pressure builds in waves. Winter surges. Capacity crises. Workforce shortages. Technology programmes that promised change but delivered more complexity instead, in a very similar way to what we have seen as a team with our work with the Police forces we’ve worked with.
Dr Simon Eccles has spent decades working in A&E, operating at the sharpest edge of the NHS. He has seen the demand for services, people unsure where to obtain the best care, and frustrated patients, whilst watching his colleagues try to do their absolute best. His perspective on digital change in healthcare is shaped by that experience. It is not abstract. It is grounded in what actually helps clinicians do their jobs and what impedes them.
When asked where technology should intervene first, his answer is immediate. Not in diagnosis. Not in triage. Not in clinical judgement.
Those are areas where professional expertise, accountability, and nuance matter most. They are also the areas where poorly applied technology can quickly erode trust.
Instead, Dr Eccles repeatedly returns to a different set of priorities. Visibility. Coordination. Communication. And crucially, case tracking across the entire healthcare system.
From his perspective, much of the strain on clinical teams does not come from the complexity of medicine itself. It comes from the effort required to understand what is happening around the patient. Where they are in the pathway. Who is responsible next. What information is missing. What has already been done.
“The NHS does not lack data. It generates vast amounts of it every day. The problem is that this information is fragmented and locked away across multiple systems, organisations, and interfaces. Clinicians and staff are forced to piece together a picture manually, often under pressure, often with incomplete information.”
As Dr Eccles puts it, the issue is not knowledge. It is flow.
When information does not move, work multiplies. Staff chase updates. Patients call repeatedly. Appointments are missed because expectations are unclear. Discharges stall because coordination breaks down between teams, as a team at Infomentum we’ve worked with Salesforce and Dr Simon Eccles team to simplify complex discharge, as we believe the NHS needs a clear vision for joined up journeys having spoken to Dr Eccles at length.
None of this is solved by asking clinicians to work harder or faster. And none of it requires technology to make clinical decisions on their behalf.
This is where Dr Eccles sees the real opportunity for platforms like Salesforce. Not as a replacement for core clinical systems, but as a coordination layer that sits above them. A way to bring information together without disrupting the systems that already do their jobs well.
We saw the same issues when we worked with NHS solutions provider, Everyturn Mental Health,a national not-for-profit delivering NHS-commissioned mental health services. They needed connected clinical systems to ensure they could quickly provide care to the most vulnerable people in society, dealing with the most complex and severe mental health issues. We know having worked with clincians that success starts when you connect data with human expertise.
In his view, he agrees with us in that the value lies in aggregation and orchestration. Pulling together data from multiple sources. Tracking cases end-to-end. Making status visible. Automating the happy path so that humans are only involved where judgement is actually needed.
When information flows, pressure eases. Staff spend less time searching and more time caring. Patients feel informed rather than anxious. Demand that previously flooded phone lines and clinics simply stops appearing.
Dr Eccles is cautious about large, all-encompassing transformation programmes. He has seen too many fail under their own weight. His advice is far more pragmatic.
Start where information breakdown is creating unnecessary work. Fix that. Let people feel the difference. Build confidence in change before moving on.
This approach protects clinical integrity while still delivering meaningful improvement. It avoids the false choice between innovation and safety. And it recognises a simple truth learned over decades in the NHS. The fastest way to improve care is not to automate decisions, but to remove the obstacles that prevent good decisions from being made in the first place.
For leaders looking to make progress, the message is clear. Fix information flow first. Everything else becomes easier once you do.
In other parts of the public sector, Infomentum has already worked with teams facing very similar pressures. In policing, leaders were dealing with rising demand, stretched contact centres, and staff spending large parts of their day responding to enquiries simply asking what was happening.
The instinct to add headcount was understandable, but it only went so far. Real progress came when attention shifted to how information moved. By improving case tracking, making updates visible, and communicating proactively, forces reduced avoidable demand. When people could see what was happening without having to ask, pressure began to fall.
We saw the same pattern when working with Everyturn Mental Health. Like many NHS teams, Everyturn was managing high volumes of referrals and assessments arriving through email, PDFs and handwritten forms. Rather than increasing headcount, they focused on improving information flow. By connecting existing systems through MuleSoft and using Salesforce as a single, structured front door, referrals moved more quickly, risk data reached clinicians sooner, and teams no longer had to chase information across inboxes.
The impact was visible almost immediately. Within the first week of go-live, 25% of referrals were processed automatically, and a further 44% were flagged consistently for rapid review, reducing rekeying and missed information. The full solution was delivered within 90 days by a small team without disrupting clinical systems or frontline care.
This matters at scale. The NHS handles over 21 million NHS 111 calls annually; acute trusts manage 1–2 million switchboard calls annually; and missed appointments alone cost £216 million. Much of this demand is driven not by clinical need, but by uncertainty and poor visibility.
As Dr Simon Eccles often observes, when information is accessible and pathways are clear, pressure naturally decreases. Work becomes calmer, coordination improves, and professionals can focus on what truly requires their expertise.
If your NHS teams are experiencing similar pressure, the question isn’t how many people you need to add. It’s whether information is flowing clearly enough to reduce demand in the first place. We’d be glad to explore that with you - just get in touch.
