How do we enable patients with chronic conditions to take care of themselves better? How do we include partners from other sectors such as charities or even families in our service delivery systems? How do we encourage personal responsibility for service outcomes? What policy frameworks will best support innovative practices? How do we do more with less?
As we head towards the second decade of the 21st century the challenges are significant and pressing. Our traditional local authority and national public service frameworks, focused on centrally organised delivery and designed over 60 years ago for a different set of societal problems, were not built for these problems. We need new approaches for understanding people and their needs and then translating these findings into operational services and supporting policies.