The government’s 10-year plan for the NHS promises bold transformation, with a move towards digital innovation, and more focus on prevention over treatment, but does it go far enough to address the UK’s gender health gap?

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has revealed his vision for the UK’s public healthcare system, promising to transform the NHS over the next decade, in the government’s Fit for the Future report.

From a renewed focus on maternity care, to ambitions to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040, the government says its 10-year plan will play a fundamental role in delivering its commitment to  women’s health “never again being ignored”.

Currently, the UK has the largest gender health gap in the G20, with the average woman spending nearly a quarter of her life in poor health compared to a fifth for men.

Yet while the plan has been described as a “strong foundation”, crucial details about how its promises will be delivered are yet to be published, and some say the lack of specific action to address the gender health gap mean it may “fall short” for women.

Community, prevention and digitisation— what the government has promised

The NHS 10 year plan is underpinned by three key pillars; a move from hospital to community, sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital.

A focus on prevention, rather than sickness, promises to deliver better access to screening, and allow better use of health data to enable more predictive and pre-emptive care.

Plans to increase uptake of HPV vaccinations aim to help the NHS reach its ambitious target of eliminating cervical cancer by 2040. Meanwhile, universal newborn genomic testing and an introduction to polygenic risk scoring will be used to identify potential risks to child and maternal health early and help predict susceptibility to diseases.

The government has also committed to a national independent investigation into maternity and neonatal services, setting out plans for the establishment of a national maternity and neonatal taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State, as well as a national action plan co-produced with bereaved families.

Placing more focus on neighbourhood health centres, rather than hospital treatment, will enable more people to access health services closer to home, according to the proposals, while an increased focus on the digitalisation of the NHS aims to make services faster, more convenient, and more personalised.

All patients will gain access to a single, digital health record, and the NHS app will be expanded allowing patients to book appointments, manage long-term conditions, reproductive health and medications, and coordinate care for children or elderly family members.

My Children, a digital alternative to what has been known for decades in maternity care as the ‘red book’ also aims to make it easier to manage children’s healthcare and medical records.

Speaking following the publication of the plan on Thursday 3 July, Streeting described this as a “meaningful advancement”, giving parents “practical tools when they need them most”.

“This isn’t just about convenience… It’s about recognising the realities of modern parenthood and removing unnecessary barriers to good healthcare,” he said.

“From offering timely, advice about feeding and weaning in those first months to providing guidance about adolescent mental health years later, this digital companion adapts to your family’s changing needs.”

Where the plan “falls short” on women’s health

The plan’s proposals for maternity care have been welcomed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), with many women not receiving the “personalised, high-quality care they deserve”.

However, president, Professor Ranee Thakar, has suggested it lacks clarity on how it will address many of the the issues contributing to the gender health gap.

“While the plan lays strong foundations, it falls short in pledging to eliminate the gender health gap that is costing women years of life and good health,” Prof Thakar said in statement on Thursday.

“Today’s plan must mark a move away from treating women’s health as a collection of niche issues towards offering women excellent, joined-up care across their life course, with investment in the women’s health workforce, Femtech and research.”

Despite the fact that one in three women in the UK will suffer from a reproductive or gynaecological problem, less than 2.5 per cent of publicly funded research is dedicated solely to reproductive health.

Thakar added: “A huge opportunity may be missed without a clear focus on delivering better for women. We would like to see the Women’s Health Strategy for England reset quickly, to work alongside the 10-Year Plan in driving improvements in women’s health access, experiences and outcomes, particularly for minority ethnic women and those in the most socially deprived areas.”

The Women’s Health Strategy, developed and published in 2022, promised to address the inequalities in the health and care system, by providing better care for menstrual and gynaecological conditions, expanding women’s health hubs, improving maternity care and accelerating research into women’s health.

Some have been critical of the roll out of the strategy, accusing the former Conservative government of using it as a “short-term vote winner” and failing to fund it properly. A total of £25m was allocated to fund one-stop-shop women’s health hubs across the country for two years, compared to £240m which was spent on the Rwanda deportation scheme.

The role of women’s health hubs

The RCOG has called for the acceleration of women’s health hubs, which its believes could play a “crucial role” in establishing the neighbourhood care model which Streeting has promised in his 10-year plan.

Hubs bring healthcare services together, making the referral process easier and allowing women to see see different specialists, therapists and diagnostic teams under one roof, which can be beneficial for those managing complex symptoms or chronic health issues.

However according to Dr Nikki Kanani, a GP specialising in women’s health and a former director of primary care for NHS England, many are still in the pilot stage and services are stretched due to a lack of healthcare professionals trained in women’s health.

“What we need to do is follow through on the commitment of the strategy, to understand what good looks like and invest in scaling that,” she tells Femtech World.

“We need to treat hubs as a core part of the system, not just a side project,” she tells Femtech World.

“We need to understand what good looks like and invest in scaling that. That needs to be clearly set out with nationally-protected funding and ICB accountability. We need to upscale across primary care, we need roles that reflect the breadth of the knowledge that’s needed, and we need protected time for clinicians to work in these spaces.”

Dr Kanani also believes hubs also need to move beyond focusing on reproductive issues to other areas of healthcare where women are traditonally “dismissed” and “deprioritised”, such as cardiovascular care and mental health services.

Alongside this, incentivised targets for gender and ethnicity gaps in diagnosis, referrals and outcomes, as well as system-wide women’s health leads, could be practical next steps to ensure women’s health is prioritised across the NHS, Dr Kanani says.

Increased investment in private innovators

The government has promised to embrace technologies such as AI, genomics, wearables and robotics, to improve clinical outcomes and reduce clinician workload, which could see a shift towards more public-private partnerships in the NHS and more investment in private innovators.

Dr Kanani says this would be “welcome”, but innovators seeking NHS partnerships, especially in the women’s health space, will need to consider factors such as regulator requirements, responsible data-gathering and the practicalities of training clinicians.

“Any femtech company innovating a point of care solution should be thinking not just of their tool, but also how their tool improves decision-making, documentation and communication, she says.

“We can roll out thousands of tools, but frontline clinicians are understandably time-poor. Part of your job as a responsible innovator, is to say ‘here is my solution, let’s train you and make sure it’s easy to use and deploy’.”

Equity needs more than strategy

The promises of the 10-year plan are bold and ambitious, but how effective it will be— especially for women— remains to be seen.

A planned chapter explaining how the proposed changes would be delivered was not published alongside the rest of the plan on Thursday, and is now expected later this year.

Dr Kanani says how the plan is delivered will be crucial in determining how far it goes to improve women’s healthcare.

“There are some important steps in the 10-year plan, but health equity for women, particularly those from minoritised, marginalised and underserved communities, won’t be achieved through strategy alone. We need a really deep, system-wide culture shift,” she says.

“Equity needs more than just the narrative of equal access, it needs tailored design. Care models, research, workforce, all need to be actively built around these women and communities.”

Dr Kanani adds: “It could be transformational for women, but only if it’s designed intentionally around the realities of women’s lives.”