The Role of Integrated Neighbourhood Teams in the NHS

Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs) are at the heart of the NHS’s shift toward place-based, preventative care. By bringing together primary care, secondary care, social care, and voluntary sector providers, INTs aim to deliver more joined-up, person-centred services tailored to the needs of local communities. However, achieving seamless collaboration across these sectors remains a significant challenge. Disconnected systems, referral inefficiencies, and a lack of real-time data often slow progress, leading to fragmented care and delivery partners unsure of the benefits to the INT.

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How Joy Digitally Enables INTs

Joy provides the digital infrastructure to help INTs function efficiently, ensuring that the right support reaches the right people at the right time.

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1. Seamless Integration Across Health and Care Systems

Unlike traditional social prescribing tools, Joy integrates directly with EMIS and SystmOne, while also working alongside local authority and secondary care systems. This ensures that INT professionals can access and refer patients across different sectors without data silos slowing them down.

With 2-way data sharing capabilities, referrals, interventions, and patient outcomes can be tracked in real-time, reducing duplication and ensuring smooth handovers between different care providers.

2. Reducing GP and A&E Demand Through Preventative Care

One of the biggest advantages of INTs is their ability to shift demand away from overstretched GPs and A&E departments by proactively addressing health and social care needs earlier. Joy plays a key role in this shift:

• Joy reduces GP appointments by an Average of 39% – By enabling seamless referrals to community and social care services, Joy ensures that non-medical issues (such as housing, financial support, and social isolation) are addressed outside of primary care.
• Joy reduces A&E by an Average of 23% – Many patients present at A&E due to unmet social and preventative care needs. Joy helps redirect these individuals to appropriate non-clinical support, reducing unnecessary hospital admissions.

These reductions translate into significant appointment and cost savings for ICBs, as well as better patient outcomes through timely intervention.

3. Real-Time Data and System-Wide Insights

One of the biggest challenges for INTs is measuring how effectively organisations are working together and what impact preventative interventions are having on patient outcomes.

Joy’s analytics dashboard provides:

• Live data on referral volumes, closing the referral feedback loop, service utilisation, and patient demographics.
• Insights into how INTs are reducing system pressures across primary, secondary, and social care.
• Identification of gaps in service provision, helping ICBs and Local Authorities commission and scale the right interventions to what matters most to their local cohorts.

By providing clear, actionable data, Joy helps INTs continuously refine their approach, ensuring resources are targeted where they can deliver the greatest impact.

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4. Reducing Administrative Burden for INT Staff

The complexity of working across multiple organisations means INT staff often face significant administrative burdens—from manual referral processes to inconsistent reporting requirements.

Joy automates workflows, enabling:

• Faster referrals (~1 min) to preventative and community services.
• Auto-population of patient data from EMIS/SystmOne and NHS Spine, reducing duplication.
• Secure messaging between INT professionals for better collaboration.

This not only frees up valuable clinician time but also improves staff satisfaction and efficiency.

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Why Digital Enablement is Critical for INT Success

For INTs to reach their full potential, they need more than just strategic alignment—they need the right digital tools to support real-time decision-making, seamless collaboration, and measurable impact.

By bridging the gap between clinical, social, and community services, Joy ensures that INTs can deliver fully integrated, preventative care at scale.

Transforming INTs with Joy: Next Steps

For INT delivery managers, ICB and place leaders looking to accelerate their INTs' impact, the question isn’t why to digitise—but how you can enable this cross-functional mode of working with digital enablement.

From our work with regional INT teams, we know the phased approach seems to be working.

• Phase 1 has been identifying cohorts of patients within neighbourhoods that are likely to need the healthcare system in the future. However, identifying them is only the first step. That’s where Joy comes in. Joy is the “so what?”
• Phase 2 is then providing those cohorts with preventative and non-clinical healthcare interventions to improve patient outcomes and reduce pressure on the NHS; freeing up waiting lists and creating a cost saving.

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Want to see Joy in action? Get in touch to explore how our platform can help your INTs improve efficiency, reduce system pressures, and enhance preventative care outcomes.