A new strategic partnership between Cogniss and Aire Innovate is set to help Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs) accelerate the delivery of neighbourhood health by enabling patients, communities and frontline services to co-design and digitise care pathways in a single day.

The partnership was formed following work led by NHS Kent & Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB), where clinicians, digital leaders and innovators explored new approaches to designing neighbourhood services. This demonstrated how engaging with communities and care teams rapidly moves from ideas to working digital pathway prototypes, creating a practical route to support the ambitions set out in the NHS 10 Year Health Plan.

The new initiative, Digitise Your Pathway in a Day, brings together Cogniss' patient engagement technology with Aire Innovate's workflow automation and interoperability platform to help neighbourhood teams design and deliver connected pathways around local need.

Importantly, the programme is designed to place citizens at the heart of pathway design.

Rather than asking patients to fit around existing services, the hackathon model enables local people to help shape how care should be delivered within their neighbourhood. Working alongside clinicians, voluntary sector organisations, local authorities and NHS teams, citizens co-design digital pathways that reflect the realities of their communities and the outcomes that matter most to them.

The initiative reflects growing recognition that successful neighbourhood health requires the citizen at the centre and better coordination across organisations, not simply greater access to services. By combining Cogniss' patient engagement platform with Aire Innovate's workflow automation and integration technology, the partnership provides a single end-to-end pathway that connects clinicians, patients, carers and community services across organisational boundaries, while working alongside existing systems.

Dr Mayur Vibhuti, Chief Clinical Information Officer, NHS Kent & Medway ICB, said:

"One of the most interesting opportunities within neighbourhood health is the potential to involve citizens much earlier in the design of services. Patients and communities often bring a different perspective because they are not constrained by existing organisational structures or ways of working.

"Creating opportunities for citizens, clinicians and community partners to come together and explore what good care could look like has the potential to generate valuable insights for neighbourhood teams as they develop more integrated and person-centred models of care."

Lloyd Humphreys, Managing Director, Cogniss, said: "If neighbourhood health is truly going to be built around people, then people need a stronger voice in shaping services. By bringing together citizens, clinicians and community partners, neighbourhood teams can rapidly create digital pathways that reflect the realities of local communities and the outcomes that matter most to them.

"Every neighbourhood is different. Rather than deploying a one-size-fits-all solution, this approach enables pathways to be co-designed by the people who will use them, helping neighbourhood teams build the capabilities they need around local priorities."

Ian Dove, Director, Aire Innovate, said: "Neighbourhood teams do not need another disconnected technology solution. They need a practical way to coordinate care across organisations and around the people they serve.

"By combining pathway digitisation, workflow automation, interoperability and patient engagement within a shared platform architecture, neighbourhoods can create end-to-end digital pathways while reducing the governance burden associated with deploying multiple standalone systems. This means one platform, one information governance approach and one digital clinical safety architecture that can support multiple pathways as neighbourhood programmes grow."

The initiative supports a range of neighbourhood priorities including frailty, long-term conditions, prevention, mental health, virtual wards and community-based care.