If you ask any GP practice manager or hospital administrator what keeps them awake at night, the answers sound remarkably similar: staff stretched to breaking point, patients waiting longer, and digital systems that feel more like obstacles than enablers. The difference is that in general practice, the cracks show more clearly, because patients are sitting right there in the waiting room while you wrestle with the system.

I've spent the past year immersed in these challenges from a different angle — building Inference Clinical, a suite of tools designed not to replace NHS systems, but to connect them, simplify them, and make them work for the people on the ground. And what strikes me most is this: the perspective of general practice is missing in too many digital conversations.

The Front Door of the NHS

Every pathway begins in general practice. Whether it's diabetes management, cardiovascular risk, or mental health support, the GP surgery is where the journey starts — and often where it ends up again when hospitals discharge patients back into the community. Yet digital projects are still designed as if practices were just another node on the network. They aren't. They are the front door to the health system, and the point at which gaps in information, consent, and workflow hit frontline clinicians hardest.

That's why, at Inference Clinical, we are focusing on making digital health infrastructure feel less like "another project" and more like a living pathway toolset.

Making Compliance Work for You

Every practice manager knows the paperwork burden of governance — DCB 0129/0160 compliance, data security toolkits, endless hazard logs. Important, yes, but often presented as yet another task piled onto already overloaded staff. Our approach is different:

It's about flipping compliance from being a drain to being a safety net you can actually trust—critical for both clinicians ensuring continuity of care and safety teams managing governance.

Prevention, Not Just Cure

One of the biggest opportunities for practices is prevention. Hospital leaders talk about "demand management," but in surgeries it's experienced as a steady flow of people who could have been supported earlier. With SteadyTrace, our heart health monitoring app, patients can use consumer wearables to spot issues before they become emergencies. For GPs, this means:

It's not a fitness gimmick — it's a bridge between patient self-care and the GP's clinical oversight.

Pathways Over Projects

Digital projects come and go. One month it's an app to solve outpatient bookings, the next it's a national dashboard. But practices live inside pathways. Hypertension, COPD, frailty — these aren't projects with an end date, they're lifelong conditions managed across systems. Our HealthFoundry platform is built to let clinicians and managers co-design pathway-focused tools that adapt to reality, not just strategy papers.

This matters, because a shiny app that doesn't align with GP workflow is just another log-in and another bottleneck. A pathway-driven design means the work feels like a natural extension of what you're already doing.

The Workforce Question

Let's be honest: no digital tool matters if it adds to the burden on already stretched staff. What general practice needs most is relief. Relief from rekeying data between systems. Relief from chasing letters and results across organisational boundaries. Relief from staying late just to catch up on admin.

Our guiding principle: If it doesn't reduce duplication, it doesn't ship.

Listening First

I'm convinced the most important thing isn't what we're building, but how we build it. The voice of practice managers and frontline clinicians should be louder in digital health — not just consulted at the end. That's why we're spending time in conversations with local practices, ICS leads, and hospital managers alike. Each sees the same problems from a different angle, and it's only by connecting those perspectives that digital transformation will finally stick.

Final Word

General practice is not just a service line in the NHS. It is the entry point, the pressure valve, and the glue that holds patient journeys together. If we want digital health to succeed, it must succeed first in surgeries like yours.

That's the conversation we're trying to have at Inference Clinical — and I'd love to hear your perspective.

Further Reading