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India has been on the pathway of improvement concerning healthcare and health outcomes of its population. However, India must overcome its unique challenges and cover a long journey ahead. This mandates a need for a high-quality, contemporary and community-based health system that promises consistent and quality healthcare, is trusted and valued by all its citizens, considers the changing population needs and should be affordable and accessible.

The study examines various dimensions and elements associated with the integrated healthcare system in India and uses input, process and output structural measures.

The present paper proposes an integrated, comprehensive healthcare system in India that endorses participation from diverse stakeholders such as the government, organizations, the community and individuals who can contribute uniquely. It also focuses on defined and measurable output that can make health a topic of social movement or “Jan Andolan” and create a sustainable and integrated care system.

The study is unique as it focuses on the role of stakeholders in health care. The research emphasized the involvement of the government, community, people and organizations in developing an integrated healthcare ecosystem that includes modern technology, skilled employees, enough finance, governance, efficient delivery platforms and top-tier infrastructure. The model’s output is focused on healthcare that is inexpensive, accessible, available, accountable and user-centered. This would gradually improve everyone’s health and well-being.

Contextual to the recognition of the complex interplay between health and behavioral aspects, integrated behavioral health (IBH) has emerged. Although this model is becoming popular in the Western world, its presence in the global context is not promising. This paper aims to explore the need for IBH in India and address its barriers to implementation and possible solutions.

We analyzed the case of IBH and its potential implications for India using the current evidence base, authors' reflections and experience of implementing similar programs.

This paper identifies contextual factors, including increased instances of non-communicable diseases and psychosocial and cultural determinants of health, that necessitate the implementation of IBH programs in India. The key features of different IBH models and their applicability are outlined. The current status of IBH and potential challenges in implementation in India in terms of human resources and other factors are delineated. We also discuss the potential models for implementing IBH in India.

Integrating behavioral health in primary care is considered an effective and sustainable model to promote health and well-being across various target populations. Towards this end, this paper is the first to discuss the contextual factors of IBH in India. It is a significant addition to the knowledge base on IBH and its possible implementation barriers and strategies in low- and middle-income countries.

Children in majority world countries (MWC) have high rates of unmet mental health needs, with limited access to specialist resources. Integration of child mental health in existing psychosocial care can improve provision. Through a Train-the-Trainer (ToT) cascade approach, this study aimed to provide a framework for such integration in resource-constrained communities in Karachi, Pakistan and to establish hindering and enabling factors.

Eight practitioners attended a child mental health ToT program, including training on a five-domain service transformation framework. Trainers co-designed and implemented interventions that integrated child mental health knowledge and skills on each domain. These were attended by 136 end-users (youth, parents, teachers, managers), of whom a sub-sample of 47 stakeholders, as well as the trainers, attended focus groups on their experiences. Data were analysed through a thematic codebook.

Established themes reflected common ingredients across all domains/interventions that were deemed important for child mental health care integration. These included child-centric approaches, positive parenting, community mobilization and systemic changes.

Integrated child mental health care informed by the Train-of-Trainer approach can be a useful model for resource-constrained MWC contexts. Integrated interventions should be co-produced with communities.

The purpose of this research is to identify novel ways of tackling health inequalities of underserved populations. It explores the opportunities presented by the changes in health and social care legislation to employ historically underused services, such as police custody healthcare providers, in addressing health inequalities.

This research analyses the policy approaches to tackling health inequalities in the UK in the past 40 years with an emphasis on those experienced by the people detained in English police custodies. It analyses the current model of healthcare in police custody and proposes a novel integrated model of care and joint commissioning opportunities in funding it.

Policies to tackle health inequalities have largely failed, as they became entrenched. But recent changes in the health and social care legislation in England offer opportunities to address them by employing historically underused healthcare services, such as those operating in police custodies.

The research does not touch upon ethical considerations related to the patient privacy aspect of integrated care. Interventions by and interactions with police custody healthcare providers would be visible to all professionals with access to the patient’s health record. As with all novel interventions or innovative models of care, the effectiveness of such clinical interventions remains to be established by further research. It opens a new line of research on quality improvement through integration of care and explores understudied aspects of joint commissioning of integrated care.

It offers health commissioners and public health leaders the opportunity to employ police custody healthcare services in reaching their population health management objectives and meeting their health inequalities objectives at local level. It also gives police and crime commissioners the opportunity to address the health drivers of criminal behaviour that overlap with health inequalities. It offers funding opportunities presented by jointly commissioning services at lower costs to both police and health commissioners alike. It improves the health outcomes of historically underserved populations by facilitating access to health and social care services and facilities.

Reducing health inequalities and disparities in health outcomes can decrease the costs of the healthcare services over the long term and might contribute to reducing criminality by addressing inequities and some health drivers of criminal behaviour.

The paper explores understudied opportunities offered by the recent changes in health and social care legislation in England and includes underused resources to tackle health inequalities.

Given the complex nature of integrated care systems (ICSs), the geographical spread and the large number of organisations involved in partnership delivery, the importance of leadership cannot be overstated. This paper aims to present novel findings from a rapid realist review of ICS leadership in England. The overall review question was: how does leadership in ICSs work, for whom and in what circumstances?

Development of initial programme theories and associated context–mechanism–outcome configurations (CMOCs) were supported by the theory-gleaning activities of a review of ICS strategies and guidance documents, a scoping review of the literature and interviews with key informants. A refined programme theory was then developed by testing these CMOCs against empirical data published in academic literature. Following screening and testing, six CMOCs were extracted from 18 documents. The study design, conduct and reporting were informed by the Realist And Metanarrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) training materials (Wong et al., 2013).

The review informed four programme theories explaining that leadership in ICSs works when ICS leaders hold themselves and others to account for improving population health, a sense of purpose is fostered through a clear vision, partners across the system are engaged in problem ownership and relationships are built at all levels of the system.

Despite being a rigorous and comprehensive investigation, stakeholder input was limited to one ICS, potentially restricting insights from varied geographical contexts. In addition, the recent establishment of ICSs meant limited literature availability, with few empirical studies conducted. Although this emphasises the importance and originality of the research, this scarcity posed challenges in extracting and applying certain programme theory elements, particularly context.

This review will be of relevance to academics and health-care leaders within ICSs in England, offering critical insights into ICS leadership, integrating diverse evidence to develop new evidence-based recommendations, filling a gap in the current literature and informing leadership practice and health-care systems.

Health care systems aspire to adopt integration strategies shifting the focus from acute care to a broader focus on community-based health and social services. Real-world examples demonstrating effective delivery of integrated care are essential.

In this article, we introduce UHN Connected Care Hub, an innovative model of care comprising an interdisciplinary team designing sustainable, shareable practices across the continuum of care alongside community and health organization partnerships.

We describe UHN Connected Care Hub’s ability to identify patients from high-risk population and collaborate to delivery timely care, in detailing the real world experience of this model of care in the organization of a centralized system of micro-clinics to administer a therapeutic for pre-exposure prophylaxis against COVID-19 (Tixagevimab/cilgavimab [Evusheld]) in a population of immunocompromised patients.

Having a centralized system of micro-clinics for care delivery presents opportunities for increased adaptability, patient accessibility, enhanced community partnerships and integratedness. Expansion in the scope of services could also create new opportunities in preventative therapies for optimizing the cost effectiveness and quality of health care provided at the population level.

There is limited evidence on how to efficiently deliver integrated care, particularly to vulnerable and co-morbid patients. We discuss how dynamic organizations with proper infrastructure and a network of healthcare partnerships may allow a more fluid response to rapidly changing policies and procedures and facilitate preparedness for future health care crises or pandemics.

This paper aims to concentrate on recent innovations in flexible wearable sensor technology tailored for monitoring vital signals within the contexts of wearable sensors and systems developed specifically for monitoring health and fitness metrics.

In recent decades, wearable sensors for monitoring vital signals in sports and health have advanced greatly. Vital signals include electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyography, inertial data, body motions, cardiac rate and bodily fluids like blood and sweating, making them a good choice for sensing devices.

This report reviewed reputable journal articles on wearable sensors for vital signal monitoring, focusing on multimode and integrated multi-dimensional capabilities like structure, accuracy and nature of the devices, which may offer a more versatile and comprehensive solution.

The paper provides essential information on the present obstacles and challenges in this domain and provide a glimpse into the future directions of wearable sensors for the detection of these crucial signals. Importantly, it is evident that the integration of modern fabricating techniques, stretchable electronic devices, the Internet of Things and the application of artificial intelligence algorithms has significantly improved the capacity to efficiently monitor and leverage these signals for human health monitoring, including disease prediction.

Technology-enabled healthcare focuses on providing better information flow and coordination in healthcare operations. Technology-enabled health services enable hospitals to manage their resources effectively, maintain continuous patient engagement and provide seamless services without compromising their perceived quality.

This study investigates the role of technology-enabled health services in improving perceived healthcare quality among patients. Data are collected from the users (n = 418) of health platforms offered in multi-specialty hospitals. Multiple learners are employed to accurately represent the users' perceived quality regarding the perceived usefulness of the features provided via these digital health platforms.

The best-fitted model using a decision tree classifier (accuracy = 0.86) derives the accurate significance of features offered in the digital health platform in fostering perceived healthcare quality. Diet and lifestyle recommendations (30%) and chatting with health professionals (11%) are the top features offered in digital health platforms that primarily influence the perceived quality of healthcare among users.

The predictability of perceived quality with the individual features existing in the digital health platform, the significance of the features on the perceived healthcare quality and the prediction rules showing the combined effect of features on healthcare quality can help healthcare managers accelerate digital transformation in hospitals by improving their digital health platform, designing and offering new health packages while strengthening their e-infrastructure.

The study represents perceived healthcare quality with the features offered in digital health platforms using machine learners based on users' post-pandemic experience. By advancing digital platforms with more patient-centric features using emerging technologies, this model can further foresee its impact on the perceived quality of healthcare, offering valuable directions to healthcare service providers. The study is limited to focusing on digital health platforms that can deal with people's general healthcare needs.

The viewpoint essay focusses on the significance of integrated care (IC) for chronic pain in India, in an attempt to reflect on how pain management and care can be made more accessible and available to patients.

This reflective essay invites looking at chronic pain beyond biomedical perspectives. Insights from the medical humanities and the social sciences are used to emphasise chronic pain as a psychosocial and socio-political phenomenon and not just a biomedical category.

The essay argues that there are several challenges and barriers to the recognition and validation of chronic pain as a speciality.

IC has not received sufficient attention in the Indian context, where medical curricula and training do not sufficiently include an understanding of the multi-faceted aspects surrounding chronic pain. By highlighting the role of humanistic approaches to effectively bridge the gap, this viewpoint essay illustrates the significance of drawing on an integrated or holistic healthcare framework.

Integrated care (IC) is mainly studied from the perspectives of organisations or employees. However, less research is focussed on how patients themselves experience person-centred (PC) IC in practice. This context-specific, small-scale study examines what PC-IC means to older patients who went through joint replacement surgery (JRS).

The data consists of ten in-depth interviews of older patients, focussing on their experiences of care during their patient journey related to joint knee or hip replacement surgery. The data were analysed with thematic analysis.

Three central dimensions of PC-IC for older patients were identified: information sharing, continuity of care and compassionate encountering. Human validation and compassionate encountering were experienced as important aspects of PC-IC. Compassionate encountering was concretised through professionals’ very small everyday practices, which made the patient feel comfortable and respected. Instead, probably due to the medical and quite straight-forward nature of the joint replacement care process, patients seem to be pleased to trust the expertise of professionals and did not necessarily expect an active role or participation in the decision-making.

This Finnish case study focusses on the patients’ authentic perceptions of what is central to person-centred IC in the specific context of JRS.