Blinx Healthcare has announced the appointment of former NHS England national director of primary care and community, Minal Bakhai as deputy CEO and chief clinical and strategy officer.
The company took to Linkedin to announce the news, stating: “At Blinx, a sovereign UK healthcare technology company, we are building the digital infrastructure for neighbourhood health — designed to create coherence across the system, enabling shared understanding, action, and accountability across system partners, centred around people and communities — enabling safer, more human, more holistic, value-based care.”
“But real change does not come from technology alone. It comes from leadership that makes that coherence real in everyday practice. Minal brings that capability in depth,” the company added.
Pointing to Minal’s experience in delivering large-scale transformation across primary care and neighbourhoods, as well as in frontline clinical care and cross-system delivery, Blinx shared hopes the appointment will help accelerate its shared mission to build the digital infrastructure required to deliver on neighbourhood health.
Wider trend: Digital in neighbourhood health
Sir James Mackey, chief executive at NHS England, has outlined next steps on planning and priorities for 2026/27 in an open letter to ICB and trust chief executives. Executives are therefore asked to begin to build out strategic commissioning narratives to focus on what strategic commissioning means for the local system and how it will be developed over the next three years; plans around neighbourhood care; whether changes to financial flows or payment are sought to help with delivery; and what more can be done at the centre to help drive pace of change locally.
NHS England has issued guidance for regions and ICBs setting out practical planning instructions for developing neighbourhood health centres, highlighting the role of digital in connectivity, integration, and enablement. “Digital capability is fundamental to the functioning of neighbourhood health services,” NHSE shares. “Neighbourhood health centres must therefore be planned as digitally enabled facilities, in line with the approach set out in the neighbourhood health centres design specification. Costings for proposed schemes should reflect this.” ICBs and regions are encouraged to look at the interaction between their physical estate and digital transformation as part of the planning process, with key factors including the possibility of a reduction in space requirements due to modern general practice models, and requirements for the neighbourhood workforce to have access to shared digital systems.
To gain insights and perspectives from across the industry, HTN asked a variety of professionals: What’s the greatest digital/industry/healthcare challenge with progressing towards neighbourhood health and how can digital be an enabler to realising success in neighbourhood health? Responses touched upon things like uncertainty in what neighbourhood health will actually look like, challenges with joining up data and systems, and assigning accountability for different elements of the patient journey.
