I am the senior policy lead for digital primary care at NHS England's national GP contract team. There, I oversee the use of the GP contract as the lever through which top-down digital services are rolled out in all c7,000 practices in England, and also led the national policy response on changes to payments and contracting models in light of emerging bottom-up digital-first models.

Having done international work including representing England at an EU project and a European healthcare policy exchange programme, I couldn't wait to go in 2019 to the USA, Australia and New Zealand where I met with representatives of more than 50 organisations.

The core of my Fellowship research was on what incentives and levers worked to drive the digitisation of primary care in best-in-class healthcare systems. During my visits, this expanded into more than just primary care, and actually focused equally on the role of integration across and between healthcare providers in helping their actual digitisation – the two go hand-in-hand, I realised.

The NHS is accelerating integration by creating new bodies, and Covid-19 has kick-started the digitisation thereof, so my lessons are very timely.