As we look to ‘build back better’ in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care System (ICS), we feel that we’ve started to reap the rewards from a more integrated approach. We are working with our local population, tackling the digital divide. As a result, we’re making progress on digital and social inclusion and taking steps to reduce health inequalities our population face.

The ICS is a collaboration between our local authorities and NHS bodies. For us, digital represents a massive shift and opportunity for wider access to health and social care, for both social services and the NHS, if executed well. As a team supporting the ICS we wanted to take a user-led design approach through the whole programme. To do this we needed to understand the current experience users had with public facing digital health and care services and also how accessible digital technologies were in our communities – especially in potentially excluded groups –before committing significant financial and other resources.