The NHS badly needs integration. Our hospitals are struggling to cope with the challenge of an ageing population. The Royal College of Physician's report, 'Future hospital: caring for medical patients' sets out new models designed to encourage collective responsibility for the care of patients across professions, healthcare teams and the buildings in which care takes place.

Hospitals are an important hub in a healthcare system. To be fit for purpose and to meet expectations of safety, comfort, compassion and sustainability, hospitals need to function differently from the way they have traditionally operated. This talk explores the hospital as part of a system of people and interventions, rather than as a collection of bricks and mortar. Such a discourse needs to consider both the national policy context and the global policy context of a changing climate.

This talk sets our 10 new rules for healthcare that can bring about real change but which, until now, have been neglected.

For many countries the hospital is the iconic emblem of the healthcare system – the home of healthcare – and, in the minds of many, the future of the hospital is a larger, shinier version of its current self. But, the hospital of the future can no longer be an independent island. It needs to be part of an interconnected web of care stretching from the patient’s home to the most specialist tertiary-level services.

When it comes to collecting patient-generated data, the NHS is a world leader. It was the one of the first health systems to launch national patient surveys and today we hear from over 1.5m patients per year. The greater challenge is to act on what people are telling us. The system must be smarter about how it uses insight. If services are truly to be designed around patients then we must understand what the data tells us not only about what needs to improve but how we make those improvements.

Recent research in behavioural science have taught us that most of what we do simply comes about, rather than being thought about. We are influenced more by the context of our decisions than the cognitions of our minds. The subtle aspects of our immediate environment greatly affect us in ways in which we are not usually unaware. With a focus on the healthcare environment, this talk discusses the mechanisms that drive our behaviour and the interventions that can increase and sustain happiness.