NHS must acknowledge 'new dawn' for healthcare from direct-to-consumer services like AI, King's Fund report says

The NHS must recognise a new era of healthcare, with more people turning to private providers, direct-to-consumer services and AI tools for advice and self-management, a new report by The King's Fund says.  

The analysis, titled ‘Is the NHS ready for the AI-powered patient' stems from a roundtable the think-tank conducted earlier this year with NHS leaders, technology developers, patient representatives, clinicians and policymakers. They discussed what direct-to-consumer care means for the NHS and how the health service can adapt, with the report setting out a series of recommendations.

The report highlights the need to respond to a world where more people will increasingly receive a combination of NHS care, private services, workplace support, digital tools and AI advice. In this new model, people flow in and out of interactions with the NHS, carrying a partially complete collection of tests and information from various sources, including consumer technologies like wearables and use AI tools for things like symptom checking, managing long term conditions, and understanding future health risks.

The work argues that given the pace of change, the health service will need to do more work on understanding how consumer-led AI innovations will complement, replace or add to the activity the NHS already does. Participants in the roundtable suggested that rather than driving unnecessary consultations and widening inequalities, AI-innovations have the potential to support more prevention-focussed services and to reach people who find it difficult to access health services.

To embrace this 'new dawn' of the consumer health revolution the report recommends that the consistent separation of physical and digital services in the NHS needs to be corrected. One way to tackle this, the report suggests is through reforming multi-disciplinary teams where appropriate to ensure that they encompass both physical and digital services that are wrapped around the patient, not anchored in an organisation's historical way of thinking.

Pritesh Mistry, author of the analysis and Fellow for Digital Technologies at The King's Fund, said:

'The proliferation of direct-to-consumer services such as AI are fundamentally changing how the health and care system operates and how people interact with it. People no longer rely on a single front door for health advice and care. The NHS needs to recognise this new dawn and respond to it, or risk being left behind as patients become more frustrated with their disconnected care experiences and poor health outcomes.

‘We need to have a clearer strategy for how consumer-facing AI innovations can help turn our health service into the prevention-focussed sector the government says it wants. The priority now should be making sure care can be more joined-up around people. Steps like reforming multi-disciplinary teams to ensure they span digital and physical services would be good first step in recognising this changing landscape and reflecting a more modern healthcare system.’

Notes to editors     

A copy of The King’s Fund report: ‘Is the NHS ready for the AI-powered patient’. In February 2026, The King’s Fund convened a roundtable with NHS leaders, technology developers, patient representatives, clinicians and policymakers to discuss what direct-to-consumer care means for the NHS.

The King’s Fund previous work on innovation in medtech: Innovation, Economic Growth, Medtech, And The NHS: From Strategy To Delivery | The King's Fund.