General practice in the NHS is under unprecedented pressure. GP appointment volumes have risen by 10 to 15 percent since before the pandemic, while workforce numbers have not kept pace. At the same time, the technology that underpins most GP practices was not designed for the demands of 21st century care delivery - characterised by poor user experience, limited data analytics, and an architecture that makes proactive, population-level care almost impossible to deliver.
But transformation is happening - and it is being driven by clinicians and digital innovators working together on the ground. In a recent webinar hosted by HTN Now, Dr Sheikh Mateen Ellahi, GP and practice partner at Elm Tree Surgery and South Stockton Primary Care Network, and Emma Stratful, Chief Operating Officer at OX.DH, came together to discuss what that transformation looks like in practice: the tools that are working, the barriers that remain, and what a genuinely modern primary care system should deliver.
Watch the full discussion below, and read our summary of the key insights from the session.
Webinar Summary: Key Themes and Insights
The discussion covered five interconnected themes: the limitations of current GP systems, the role of data quality, the neighbourhood health model, barriers to change, and what the next generation of primary care technology should look like. Below is a summary of the most significant points raised.
1. The Biggest Limitations of Current GP Systems
Dr Ellahi opened by identifying two fundamental problems with existing GP systems: poor user experience and limited analytics capabilities. These are not cosmetic issues - they have direct consequences for clinical decision-making and patient outcomes.
Current systems, he explained, leave clinicians working reactively rather than proactively. Without the ability to run predictive analysis on patient populations, GPs are largely responding to presenting conditions rather than identifying and intervening with at-risk patients before they reach crisis point. "What we need to aim for," Dr Ellahi said, "is a modern system that uses AI and machine learning to predict patient conditions based on historical, real-time data, to hopefully enable better patient outcomes."
He gave a concrete example from his own practice: the introduction of a new telephony system that reduced average call waiting times from three minutes to under a minute across a week handling 2,500 calls. The gains from even relatively modest technology improvements, he noted, can be significant - but only if the underlying system is capable of supporting them.
The three areas Dr Ellahi identified as critical priorities for modern general practice are:
- Equity and access to care - ensuring all patient groups can engage with services effectively
- Prevention rather than treatment - shifting the clinical focus upstream through early identification and intervention
- Digital triage - deploying structured triage tools that route patients to the right level of care efficiently
2. The Critical Role of Data Quality
Emma Stratful highlighted a challenge that many GP practices will recognise immediately: the gap between having data and being able to use it meaningfully. "Many practices are struggling even just to get two screens or reliable internet," she noted - a reminder that digital transformation in the NHS starts from a widely varying baseline.
But even for practices with reasonable infrastructure, the quality and structure of clinical data remains a significant constraint. Emma emphasised the importance of moving beyond raw data collection to ensure that data is structured, accurate, and actionable. Tools such as Power BI, she noted, can help practices run key reports on risk stratification, enabling more targeted and effective care delivery.
"If you're able to analyse and unpick the data that you currently have within your practice," she said, "you're going to be able to better serve your patients at a patient level but also at the local population level." This connection between data quality and population health outcomes is central to OX.DH's approach with OX.gp, which offers real-time dashboards and enhanced reporting as core features of the platform.
3. Supporting the Neighbourhood Health Model
The discussion moved to the NHS's neighbourhood health model and how primary care systems need to evolve to support it. For Dr Ellahi, the neighbourhood health agenda is fundamentally about population management - looking at a whole community's needs, not just the individuals who present at the surgery.
He referenced evidence suggesting that effective risk stratification and patient segmentation can reduce hospital admissions by 15 to 20 percent. By identifying patients who are more prone to specific conditions - flu, for example, or cardiovascular events - and engaging them proactively through targeted programmes, GP practices can shift from demand management to genuine prevention.
He also acknowledged the complexity of neighbourhood working. Creating effective neighbourhood health teams, he said, would be "a long and difficult project that will take years to properly implement" - but that should not be a reason to delay starting. The best path forward combines making full use of current systems and their capabilities while building towards a more integrated future infrastructure.
4. Overcoming Barriers to Digital Change
What stops GP practices from making the switch to better systems, even when they know their current technology is holding them back? The discussion surfaced several honest answers.
Dr Ellahi noted the resource challenge: with GP appointment volumes at record highs and more GPs leaving the profession, practices simply do not have the bandwidth to manage major IT transitions on top of clinical demand. The RCGP has reported a 10 to 15 percent increase in appointments since before the Covid pandemic - a figure that sets the context for everything else.
But mindset, too, plays a role. Even when the technical case for change is overwhelming, the day-to-day reality of retraining staff, migrating data, and temporarily disrupting workflows creates a significant psychological barrier. The practices most likely to make successful transitions, the panel agreed, are those with strong clinical and operational leadership, a clear sense of what they want to achieve, and a realistic plan for managing the transition period.
For Emma, OX.DH's approach to this challenge starts with understanding what GP practices actually need - not just in terms of features, but in terms of the support and change management required to make a transition work. OX.gp has been developed directly in collaboration with GP practices and PCNs, with workflows designed around real clinical realities rather than theoretical use cases.
5. What Good Looks Like: The OX.DH Approach
Emma outlined how OX.DH entered the core GP clinical system market through the NHS England Tech Innovation Framework - a route specifically designed to introduce modern, cloud-native alternatives to the legacy systems that have dominated the market for decades.
OX.gp, she explained, is built around four core design principles that address the limitations described throughout the webinar: a modern, intuitive interface that reduces friction for clinicians; robust data infrastructure that supports analytics and reporting; built-in interoperability with other care settings; and a flexible, configurable architecture that allows practices to adapt the system to their specific workflows rather than the other way around.
The goal, in essence, is to give GP practices a system that works for them - one that makes the data they already hold actionable, reduces administrative overhead, and creates the conditions for genuinely proactive, population-focused care.
About the Speakers
Dr Sheikh Mateen Ellahi is a GP and practice partner at Elm Tree Surgery and South Stockton Primary Care Network. He has over a decade of clinical experience, including five years as a GP partner, and holds an MBA in Global Health with Distinction from UCL. He is a PCN Lead in Teaching, a GP and ACP Trainer, and is actively involved in primary care consultancy, digital transformation and access improvement. He is widely recognised in the health technology sector for his forward-looking approach to deploying AI and digital tools in general practice.
Emma Stratful is Chief Operating Officer at OX.DH. She leads operations and NHS engagement, working closely with GP practices and PCNs to understand the operational realities of digital transformation in primary care and ensure OX.DH's solutions are designed to address them.
About OX.DH and the NHS Tech Innovation Framework
In July 2025, NHS England approved OX.DH's primary care solution, OX.gp, as part of a new generation of electronic patient record systems for GPs. OX.DH's modern, cloud-native and secure-by-design digital solutions are designed to transform patient care and operational efficiency across the NHS.
As OX.DH continues its growth, it welcomes conversations with healthcare managers, clinical leads, GP practices, PCNs, and potential investors who share its vision for a more modern, connected and data-driven NHS primary care system.
Related Reading
- OX.gp: Our Primary Care Solution
- OX.DH Achieves NHS Tech Innovation Framework Qualification
- OX.DH Partners With FDB to Shape Intelligent Medicines Management
- OX.DH Services
Get Involved
Whether you're a GP practice manager exploring alternatives to your current system, a PCN lead thinking about population health data, or an ICB digital lead planning your next phase of primary care modernisation - we would love to hear from you.
Book a demo of OX.gp or contact our team to start the conversation.
About the Author
John Kosobucki is CEO of OX.DH (Oxford Digital Health), a cloud-native digital health company focused on transforming NHS primary care. John leads OX.DH's strategic partnerships, NHS engagement, and the development of OX.gp. Learn more about OX.DH's founders.