Improving health outcomes: The shift from reactive to proactive care
Health tech, Transforming Care
18 May 2026
By Louisa
Health and care systems have long been designed to respond to illness, not prevent it. But as demand continues to rise and workforce pressures intensify, that model is no longer sustainable.
For leaders across the NHS, the challenge is shifting from reactive care to a more proactive, data-driven approach, empowering patients to participate actively in their own care. Care that identifies risk earlier, supports people in the community, and improves outcomes without adding to clinical burden.
This shift encourages health and care services to invest in tools that empower patients to manage their administrative and clinical interactions, enable appointment scheduling, medication adherence tracking, remote patient monitoring, easy access to educational resources and real-time communication with clinicians. Where traditional healthcare systems have long placed patients in a passive role, these solutions shift that dynamic, making individuals active contributors to their own treatment decisions.
In a recent discussion, Mayden Directors Tom Scott and Reece Donovan explore what is holding that shift back, as well as what needs to change to make proactive care a reality at scale.
From treating illness to preventing it
“The system we have today was built to treat problems once they appear,” says Reece Donovan, CEO at Mayden. “But the real opportunity is to intervene earlier, before people become unwell in the first place.”
Reece insists that this shift is no longer theoretical. The technology already exists.
“Wearable devices can track heart rate and detect arrhythmias in real time,” he explains. “Continuous glucose monitors allow people with diabetes to manage their condition day-to-day”. These tools are bringing healthcare closer to the individual, creating the potential for earlier intervention and better long-term outcomes.
Reece points to an even broader horizon. “When you start to layer in things like genomics and personalised health data, you can begin to understand how someone’s body responds to nutrition, medication, or lifestyle factors. That gives you the opportunity to change their trajectory much earlier.”
This information could be invaluable in enabling fewer acute episodes, better patient outcomes, and lower costs across the system. But unlocking that potential requires more than technology alone.
“The system is fundamentally focused on cures,” Tom Scott, CRO at Mayden, adds, “with incentives and structure set up for treating people rather than proactively managing health”. Tom emphasizes that a cultural shift is necessary to support a "shift left" toward prevention and that better data integration across an individual's life journey is required.
The real barrier: data, workflows and people
Despite the availability of data, progress toward proactive care has been slow. According to Reece, the challenge can be boiled down to a “three-way problem”.
“We have the data, or at least the potential to stitch it together. But workflows are inconsistent, and the way people interact with systems hasn’t caught up,” he explains.
Data often sits in silos, fragmented across services and systems. Even when it is accessible, it is not always presented in a way that supports decision-making. Clinicians are left to navigate large volumes of information without clear signals on what matters most.
Tom adds that incentives play a role too. “The system is still geared towards treatment and discharge. We’re not consistently measuring what happens after someone leaves care; whether they actually get better, stay well, or return.”
That gap between activity and outcome is critical. If the goal is truly preventative care, then success must be measured over longer time horizons, months or even years after intervention.
But even with better data and measurement, change will not happen without addressing the human element.“You can have the best data in the world,” Reece says, “but if it’s not easy to access, understand, and act on, it won’t change behaviour.”
Turning data into action (without adding burden)
If the challenge is not data collection, but action, then the role of digital tools becomes clearer.
“The key is getting the right information, to the right person, at the right time, within the systems they already use,” Tom says. “It has to reduce cognitive load, not increase it.”
This is where intelligent platforms and automation come into play.
NHS App-integrated digital “front doors”, enabled through patient engagement platforms (PEPs) like Portasana, can triage patients earlier, route them to the right pathways, and capture structured data from the outset. For services managing long waiting lists, such as ADHD and autism pathways, this can be transformative.
“Too often, a patient joins the end of a queue only to find out they’re on the wrong pathway,” Reece explains. “Early triage and risk stratification can prevent that entirely.”
“Within clinical EPR systems like iaptus, structured workflows ensure that data is captured consistently and meaningfully, supporting both care delivery and outcome measurement,” Tom adds. “Meanwhile, ambient voice technology (AVT) tools like CLAI are beginning to reduce the administrative burden, automating note-taking, coding, and other repetitive tasks that can take up to 30% of a clinician’s time”.
“It’s what we call the ‘death by a thousand clicks’,” Reece concludes. “If we can reduce that friction, through better workflows, automation, and smarter design, we give clinicians time back to focus on care.”
From digital access to continuous, personalised care
A critical component of proactive care is the ability to capture and act on patient-generated data over time.
Platforms must support ongoing engagement, not just single interactions, allowing services to build a longitudinal picture of an individual’s health.
“From EPRs, case management systems and patient engagement solutions, to AVT and AI-enabled workflows, we can collect structured data and enable digital touch points,” Reece outlines. “That creates a continuous feedback loop, rather than a snapshot at a single point in time.”
This approach supports more personalised care and earlier intervention, but it also raises important questions around accessibility.
“Software needs to be designed collaboratively, ensuring interoperability that meets the real world needs of users.” Tom emphasises. “That also means recognising that not everyone will engage digitally and ensuring there are alternative routes and support mechanisms in place.”
At the same time, the majority of the population is already using digital tools. The challenge is to harness that engagement effectively, while ensuring inclusivity remains central to service design.
A system-wide shift toward community-based care
Moving to proactive, data-driven care models will enable more services to be delivered in the community, reducing reliance on acute settings and easing pressure on hospitals and A&E departments.
“For me, the goal is simple,” Reece says. “Fewer people in hospital. Fewer people reaching crisis point. More people supported earlier, in the right place.”
Reece insists that this not only improves patient outcomes, but also delivers significant cost savings and a better experience for the workforce.
“When clinicians have the right information at their fingertips, and less administrative burden, they can focus on what they’re trained to do,” Tom adds. “That improves decision-making, reduces stress, and ultimately leads to better care.”
Furthermore, proactive, community-based care improves patient confidence by providing easily accessible points of contact that do not always require driving to a hospital or seeing a doctor. Reece suggests that local contact points, such as a pharmacist or community worker, can offer timely support, especially in the evenings when surgeries are closed, helping to pick up early warning signs.
Tom goes on to highlight that integration with a single point of truth, such as the NHS app, can help reduce the asymmetry of information by pushing resources directly to individuals, allowing them to engage more closely with their proactive management and care plan.
Beyond healthcare, the societal impact is equally important. A healthier population contributes more fully to the economy, reduces long-term demand on services, and improves overall quality of life.
Designing for better outcomes
The shift from reactive to proactive care is not simply a technological challenge, it is a systemic one. It requires changes in how data is used, how workflows are designed, and how success is measured. It means moving beyond access as the primary goal of digital transformation, and towards outcomes: people feeling well, staying well, and needing less intensive intervention over time.
At Mayden, this philosophy underpins the development of our digital technology; each product is designed to improve outcomes, provide joined-up care, reduce clinician burden, and enable earlier, more meaningful intervention.
Because the future of healthcare will not be defined by how efficiently we treat illness, it will be defined by how effectively we can prevent it.
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