$50 billion is to be awarded across all 50 US states to improve rural health, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced, in an initiative to “strengthen and modernise” healthcare for rural communities.
According to the HHS, investments will be used to modernise facilities and equipment, expand remote monitoring and telehealth, and introduce digital tools to expand access to care. “States are also exploring the use of technology such as AI scribes and clinical workflow improvement tools to reduce burdens on clinicians,” it notes.
States will implement comprehensive strategies incorporating work such as expanding preventative care, creating new access points to bring care closer to home, strengthening cybersecurity and interoperability, establishing data sharing platforms, and developing partnerships with other providers.
Funds are set to be allocated to states over five years, with $10 billion available every year from 2026 to 2030. Whilst 50 percent is distributed equally, the remaining 50 percent will be distributed based on factors such as rurality, proposed policy actions, and initiatives that offer the greatest potential for impacting health in rural communities.
Along with the funding announcement, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a new phase of collaboration with states, with dedicated project officers assigned to each state to offer ongoing guidance and technical assistance. States are expected to report back on progress and to convene at the annual CMS Rural Health Summit to share lessons learned and focus on accelerating innovation.
Pennsylvania has been awarded $193 million for the first year of its rural health transformation plan, reportedly gathering feedback from a range of engagement opportunities indicating priorities across tech and infrastructure, modernising rural infrastructure, providing care management and navigation between prenatal and postpartum care, and supporting quality of care in rural long-term care facilities.
The state is offering funding opportunities to help rural health and care providers implement EHRs and to join Pennsylvania’s patient and provider network, which supports information sharing between health providers and systems. “Electronic health records and interoperability between health systems increases information available to providers to offer individualized, informed care that considers a person’s holistic health needs and experiences. Historically, the onus would be on a patient to provide this information – a system that can be burdensome at best and, at times, impossible,” said PA departments of human services secretary Val Arkoosh. “These funding opportunities will help rural health providers make this investment in their system, their workforce, and their patients – improving efficiency and operations and, most importantly, improving care and coordination for their patients.”
Wider trend: Preventative care
Greater Manchester ICB has launched its five-year strategic commissioning plan to 2031, with the three shifts to digital, community, and prevention embedded into a number of priority areas. A new digital strategy is to be published in January 2027 to build the digital capability to enable its objectives, it explains, going on to detail the role of digital and innovation in the delivery of future care in the region. “In practice, this means changing what we measure, what we fund, what we contract for and what we expect from providers and partners,” GM states. “It also means increasing the share of investment that supports prevention, neighbourhood care, VCFSE delivery and community capacity, rather than relying predominantly on reactive and hospital-based responses.”
NIHR’s Invention for Innovation Funding At the Speed of Translation (FAST) programme is offering funding between £50,000 and £100,000 over a period of six-to-twelve months for preventative technologies in the community care space. The programme is designed to support the real-world integration of tech aligned with the prevention agenda into community care settings such as neighbourhood health hubs, community diagnostic centres, and community pharmacies. Prevention may include primary interventions based on environment, behaviour or lifestyle; or secondary pathways such as risk stratification and escalation pathways. Secondary prevention also includes interventions treating “high-risk” conditions such as hypertension, pre-diabetes, or early stage liver disease, in order to prevent heart attacks, stroke, or cirrhosis.
Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB and Northamptonshire ICB’s latest five-year strategic commissioning plan to 2031 highlights the move from short-term recovery to longer-term transformation, outlining the role of digital and data in areas such as population health, neighbourhood health, and prevention. The ICBs also share that a new digital and data strategy is expected in September 2026, with a data quality strategy to follow by March 2027.
