With many health and care services under intense pressure, people using and working in those services have high expectations about the potential of technology to help meet patients’ needs and improve quality of care. To date, most technology transformation has been focused on hospitals, with innovations in community settings, such as ‘virtual wards’, seen as a vital tool to help bring down elective care waiting lists and support people to avoid hospital visits.

Digital technology could help to deliver the long-held but unrealised ambition of moving care closer to home. This ambition would not just reduce the need for people to access already over-stretched hospital-based care, but would also provide more effective, higher-quality care in the community to enable people with ongoing care needs to live independent and full lives. Funding and support programmes, such as the Adult Social Care Technology Fund and the Better Care Fund, can facilitate the use of digital technology in community settings. But is the health and care system realising these technologies’ full potential?

This long read shares the findings of our research (see Methodology below) into the current reality of digital technology use in community services, and what the future could – and should – hold.