IFIC Forum Discussion on Learning

As part of IFIC’s Forum Discussion series on the Nine Pillars of Integrated Care, this session explored the Learning Pillar and what it takes to build learning into the everyday work of integrated care.

The discussion began with a provocation: after more than 15 years of pilots, exemplars and case studies in integrated care, why are we still having many of the same conversations? Is the challenge that we do not learn, or that we learn but fail to act on and sustain what we have learned?

Panellists Áine Carroll, Mirella Minkman and Yannis Pappas, facilitated by Fiona Lyne, explored learning as an active and continuous part of integrated care rather than something that happens only through evaluation at the end of a programme.

The conversation highlighted the importance of creating environments where professionals have time and space to reflect, learn and adapt; developing knowledge infrastructures that make evidence and experience accessible and usable; and maintaining organisational memory when people, structures and policies change.

The Forum also explored whose knowledge counts. Panellists considered how knowledge from people with lived and living experience, families, communities and frontline professionals can move beyond consultation or feedback to genuinely influence decision-making. The discussion emphasised that participation alone does not guarantee influence, and that organisations need clearer ways of demonstrating how contributions have shaped decisions.

Continuity, trust and relationships emerged as essential conditions for learning. Participants reflected on the need for protected time, better access to usable data, stronger links between learning and governance, and greater openness about uncertainty and failure. Rather than continuing a culture of short-term pilots and extensive indicator reporting, the discussion called for longer-term, adaptive approaches that connect knowledge to action and allow systems to understand what is working, what is not and why.

The audience also brought perspectives on innovation, organisational change, foresight and the potential role of AI in future learning systems.

This Forum provides a thought-provoking exploration of how health and care systems can move from simply producing knowledge to learning from it, acting on it and sustaining that learning over time.