What NHS boards say, and what they have done.
A read of every English health system's 2026 board papers, scoring the nine priorities of the 10 Year Health Plan against actual delivery. Where importance and delivery are furthest apart, and what it means if you sell software into the NHS or sit on one of its boards. England only, as at July 2026.
The NHS has a national plan. The 10 Year Health Plan for England, published in July 2025, sets the priorities every health system is meant to deliver. This paper measures two things against that plan, system by system: how much importance the board places on each priority, and how far it has actually got. Both are read from the systems' own 2026 board papers.
It covers all 42 English health systems and the organisations within them, 122 assessed and 119 carrying at least one score. Each score carries a supporting extract and a citation, with a page reference on almost every directly scored cell, 911 evidenced scores in all. One finding runs through it: across the nine priorities, national importance runs higher than national delivery, and the gap is widest by a distance on finance. This is a single snapshot, one year into a plan that runs to 2035, and it will be refreshed each quarter.
What is inside
- How the radar measures and scores, and the four rules that keep every score tied to a real board pack
- The overall picture: high importance, middling delivery, and the finance gap that shapes every other decision
- AI, widely adopted but rarely scaled, in 73 of 119 organisations and mostly still at trial stage
- Digital records, nearly everywhere but mostly early, and the single patient record, real in a few systems and missing in most
- Cyber security, named as a risk in most packs and funded in few
- What it means if you sell software to the NHS, and what it means if you sit on an NHS board
Who it is for
Founders and commercial leaders of growth-stage software and AI companies selling into the NHS in England. Boards and investors who want an honest read on where the system is putting its weight and where it is falling short. NHS leaders who want to see their own system against the national picture. It is a commercial and governance read, not regulatory or legal advice.
Written from an operating perspective
By Andrew Wyatt, founder of Ortent Advisory. Four exits over three decades (Lotus to IBM, Paragon to Phone.com, Apertio to Nokia $240M, Clearswift to Lyceum) plus CGO and COO seats in digital health and life sciences at Sapio Sciences and Lumeon. The paper pairs with the interactive map, where you can open any system and read the evidence behind every score.