Dr Saif Ahmed, Clinical Digital Lead for Transformation at Health Innovation Manchester, explains why Greater Manchester is uniquely positioned to lead the NHS Single Patient Record revolution. 

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The recent national direction on the Single Patient Record (SPR) is a welcome and necessary evolution for the NHS. But the most important takeaway from Ming Tang’s comments is this: the SPR is not about creating one vast, centralised data lake. It is about federation, trust, and connectivity – a set of interoperable “Lego bricks” that present the right information, at the right time, in the right workflow.

And in Greater Manchester, we are already years ahead of the curve.

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GMCR: A Federated System Built Before Federation Became National Policy

The Greater Manchester Care Record (GMCR) has already proved that a joined-up, shared longitudinal view of a citizen’s health is not theoretical, it is live, used daily and delivering measurable value.

Greater Manchester is one of the few regions with mature, real-world SPR-aligned use cases already deployed, including:

• End-of-Life / EPaCCS

Over 6,500 active live plans, more than 15,000 completed, and consistently high “preferred place of death” achievement rates (often 80–85%, significantly above national averages). This is exactly the type of personalised, anticipatory care the SPR aims to scale.

• Frailty

Our frailty digital care plan, co-designed with clinicians, community teams, and social care,  enables proactive planning, shared escalation protocols and reduces avoidable admissions. It embodies the NHS Long Term Plan’s “left shift” and the GM Live Well prevention ambitions.

GMCR is already doing what the SPR promises: enabling clinicians, social care professionals, and voluntary sector teams to see a trusted, shared version of the truth.

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Alignment with National Strategy: 10-Year Plan & Life Sciences Strategy

The SPR is not just a data programme — it is a reform programme, and it aligns tightly with two other national shifts that matter to Greater Manchester:

1. NHS 10-Year Plan – Prevention, Personalisation, and Place-Based Care

The Plan’s emphasis on neighbourhood models, prevention demonstrators, digitally-enabled care, and anticipatory pathways maps perfectly to the GMCR’s current trajectory.

We have already operationalised what the Plan describes:

• Integrated neighbourhood teams using shared care plans
• Virtual wards and Hospital@Home aligned with frailty and chronic disease
• Digitally enabled proactive care pathways
• Data flowing across organisational boundaries

GM is not just ready for the SPR, we are the SPR in miniature.

2. UK Life Sciences Strategy – Data at Scale, Innovation Zones, and Translational Research

A federated SPR layered onto advanced shared-care infrastructure is the foundation for:

• Large-scale real-world evidence (RWE) generation
• Rapid evaluation of innovations
• Seamless integration between research, digital care, and service delivery
• Attracting industry partners who require high-quality longitudinal datasets

GMCR is already one of the most complete datasets in the UK. The SPR gives us the national architecture to scale this into a pan-UK learning health system, where Greater Manchester can act as a national innovation test bed.

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Blue-Sky Thinking: What an AI Layer on SPR/GMCR Could Unlock

Where the SPR becomes truly transformational is when you lay AI, predictive analytics, and intelligent care-pathway automation on top of a federated shared care record.

Here are some forward-looking possibilities:

1. Population-Level Predictive Insights

Using federated data, AI could:

• Predict which neighbourhoods will see spikes in frailty deterioration
• Model risk of emergency admissions for thousands of citizens
• Forecast social care demand and optimise workforce allocation
• Identify early signals of long-term conditions before clinical symptoms appear

This is prevention “at population scale” not just at patient level.

2. AI-Augmented Clinical Pathways

With a shared record underpinning all care providers, AI can become a real-time clinical companion, for example:

• Deterioration alerts triggered by remote monitoring data, care plan changes, or GP-coded observations
• Automated pathway nudges (e.g. if a frail patient’s mobility drops, prompt a community matron review)
• Escalation prompts when end-of-life priorities change or safeguarding risks emerge
• Cross-sector triage tools ensuring the right clinician or service picks up the patient first time

This is not replacing clinical judgement; it is enhancing it with continuous, context-aware intelligence.

3. Federated Learning for National Improvement

Because the SPR is federated, not centralised, we can deploy federated learning techniques, where models train locally on ICS datasets but learn nationally.

This protects privacy while unlocking national insights – a unique UK differentiator.

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Greater Manchester’s Opportunity

GM has something rare:

• A functioning, trusted shared care record
• A decade of integrated care culture
• Strong digital leadership across ICS, localities, trusts, and primary care
• A mature system already using SPR-priority use cases (EOL, frailty)
• A combined authority aligned on digital, prevention, and life sciences growth

If the SPR is the national direction of travel, then Greater Manchester is already on the motorway.

The opportunity now is to:

1. Align GMCR directly with SPR technical standards (open APIs, common data models, FHIR, openEHR).
2. Act as a national demonstrator for AI-enabled shared care pathways.
3. Use our GM Prevention Accelerator and Life Sciences ecosystem to test new models at pace.
4. Show the country how federated data, intelligent pathways, and neighbourhood care can reduce hospital demand at scale

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Closing Thought

The Single Patient Record is not just a data platform.

It is an enabler of a digitally-driven, prevention-first, integrated health and care system.

And Greater Manchester, with the GMCR, our neighbourhood models, and our thriving life sciences ecosystem  is uniquely placed to show the rest of the country what that future looks like.