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The UK – Norway Policy Playbook

Hannah Granshaw

11 March 2026

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1 min read

SCFH is pleased to share our newly published UK – Norway Policy Playbook, capturing key insights from the UK – Norway Smart Hospitals and Intelligent Health Systems Roundtable. Convened with Team Norway, DNVI and Sonitor, the event brought together senior leaders from healthcare, digital transformation, clinical operations and policy to explore how intelligent hospital systems can improve patient safety and clinical performance.

Health systems in the UK, Norway and other advanced economies face growing pressures, rising demand, workforce shortages, increasing clinical complexity and fiscal constraints. The playbook highlights that incremental reform is no longer sufficient; instead, system-wide redesign and intelligence embedded from the outset are needed.

“The UK – Norway Policy Playbook articulates a strategic vision for the next generation of smart and intelligent hospitals. Informed by senior leadership dialogue and SCFH sustained investment in understanding cross border and system-wide healthcare challenges, it outlines how embedding intelligence across workforce, pathways and digital infrastructure can enable more anticipatory, outcomes-driven care. Crucially, it establishes the foundations for stronger patient safety and more resilient, sustainable health systems for years to come.”

Taja Quigley, Partner, SCFH

Key themes from the roundtable include:

Safety by design: Embedding safety into hospital buildings, digital systems and operating models.
Intelligence in the system: Aligning people, processes and technology through standardisation and governance.
Platforms, not projects: Designing systems that can adapt and scale innovations across the health system.
Interoperability: Seamless data and information flows across community, acute, and digital care pathways.
Behaviour follows system design: Creating environments where the safest ways of working are also the easiest.

The playbook makes clear that intelligent hospitals are defined not by technology volume, but by how effectively they support safer, more integrated care. Hospitals must function as part of a wider health ecosystem, supporting care closer to home while reserving hospital capacity for patients who most need specialist intervention.

SCFH will continue to facilitate cross-system dialogue, shared learning, and collaboration to accelerate the development of safe, intelligent, and sustainable hospital systems.

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