Tuesday 26 May 2026
This week I joined the team at Anima.
In a previous life, I was a Junior (Resident) Doctor, working across Primary and Secondary care in the NHS. If you've worked in healthcare, you'll have at least one story about breaking (and broken) technology. I came across a myriad of tools and processes that collided head-on with the realities of a busy practices and clinics. I also heard clear-eyed ambition for what better technology could do for healthcare.
The thought that grew and grew, and led me to today: healthcare workers should be at the centre of delivering the software that helps us. This is why I joined Anima. We support over 1,000 GP practices, serving 14 million patients, and we are building a patient-centred, integrated care platform.
A week in, here's what's on my mind.
Point solutions have a limit
There are plenty of good point solutions that Primary and Secondary care use every day. But the real value isn't in any single tool or function. It's in how they connect, and what that means for the daily reality of each person. A provider isn't a collection of separate workflows; it's an integrated, do-it-all organism, and the software has to match that.
Anima works for every workflow, and every user: patients, admin staff, clinicians, managers. In practice that means either bringing functions together (Messaging that doesn’t interrupt your workflow, and an integrated view of demand across online and telephone Triage), or integrating seamlessly with what's already there (surfacing the right information from EMIS or SystmOne, and pushing data and tasks back the other way).
Integration matters as an outcome too, not just an input. Integration is what empowers providers to see, understand and act: it becomes the core of how care is planned and delivered, and shows what that care means for those receiving it.
Every implementation is more than a financial investment
Decision-makers sign the contract, but every team member invests their time, energy, and goodwill in the solution. Every question and concern matters, because any left unaddressed are potential blockers to meaningful use, and to impact.
Having the right approvals is necessary, but it's a baseline: none of the value lives there. We're moving out of an era of long, unfavourable procurement contracts that locked providers into outdated tools, and into one of shorter, provider-centred contracts that put real pressure on suppliers to deliver against their promises. This pressure is a good thing. Transformation fatigue is real. Every unmet promise is missed value today, and it stretches the patience of those whose work the tools are supposed to transform.
I am part of a team of clinician engineers and implementers who understand this. We’ve built the product from the ground up, with your reality front of mind. We'll put you in touch with other customers, to hear from colleagues the value we bring. We won't lock you into a contract you aren't getting value from. And we invest our time in onboarding you properly, before we ask you to invest yours.
Champions are turning Policy into Product
There are healthcare innovators and system-thinkers in every conversation I've been in, across care settings and roles. They, like me, are excited about the transformative vision of Neighbourhood and ‘1.5 care’. Crucially, they are also pragmatic about how to get there. The conversation rapidly moves from "Here is the vision" to "What do we build first, together?".
The appetite from these healthcare leaders for co-creation is huge, and they bring an unmatched view of where the real problems are, and the specific things that could be done tomorrow to make a difference. The future of healthcare is being built already, in these conversations in hospital offices and practice conference rooms, piece by piece.
I feel genuinely lucky to be building the future of integrated care with the Anima team and our Champions. I'm exactly where I want to be, and as a healthcare worker, where I feel I should be. There's a lot more in the pipeline, and plenty more to come. If you want to join the conversation, I’d love to hear from you - click here to email me.
— Ben