ICIC16

We have just published a paper on an integrated community service development we have been observing for more than a decade (1,2). The collaborative relationship started with the recognition that people with serious and persistent mental illnesses did not access general practitioners for physical health care despite being amongst the most vulnerable people in the community.

Globally, 2016 is likely to become regarded as the year that the integrated care movement came of age. The ratification by the 69th World Health Assembly in May of the World Health Organisation’s Framework for Integrated People-Centred Health Services set a global challenge for all care systems to make a fundamental shift in care delivery that puts people and communities at the centre of more co-ordinated health and care systems.