The NHS Future Forum is to examine integrated care, information, public health, and education and training in its next phase of work. The chief executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, has urged it to be radical while it has the ear of ministers and civil servants.

Steve Field, who chairs the forum set up by the government to review the planned reforms in the Health and Social Care Bill, disclosed the new work agenda at a breakfast meeting on integrated care at the King’s Fund on 12 July. He said that he had been convinced by the forum’s work, during the pause in legislation, that integrated care was the way forward for the NHS and that at a meeting with the forum yesterday Professor Nicholson had urged a radical approach. …