Integrating Health and Social Care to Cope With an Aging Population: Innovation Challenges

Improving total life expectancy is shifting the demographic balance towards an older population but healthy life expectancy is not keeping pace. This creates growing demands for health and social care that exceed available resources and can only be met by innovation. Policy responses have moved towards integrated and multidisciplinary approaches that seek to build ecosystems. Place has emerged as a major dimension with cities providing sites where such integration is seen as most achievable.

The presentation describes a radical full-scale experiment in Greater Manchester, UK where the entire healthcare budget of c.$7bn pa has been devolved to the city authorities on the condition that it is integrated with social care to provide a continuous solution between health and care needs. The success of this experiment requires substantial innovation and has attracted the interest of global business. Health data analytics provide a core dimension in a city where the population is diverse, stable and accessible but exhibits poor health outcomes. The city also hosts the national Internet of Things Pilot CityVerve, which includes health and social care use-cases. It is concluded that cities provide a natural site for integrated approaches and in turn require the support of place-based research and innovation policies.