Radar Healthcare Report Finds Fragmented IT Systems Force Nearly Three Quarters of Health and Care Leaders to Piece Together Information Manually

• Radar Healthcare's inaugural Signal to Safer Care™ report warns that early signs of patient harm can be missed when information is held in separate systems
  
  
• Only one in ten say the information they need is well connected across their organisation

LONDON, Nov. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly three quarters (73%) of respondents to Radar Healthcare's survey say their teams have to manually piece together information from fragmented systems, reports and departments before making strategic decisions, according to Signal to Safer Care™, the inaugural State of Quality, Safety & Governance report from Radar Healthcare.

Across health and care, information on patient safety incidents, staffing, complaints, audits and patient feedback typically sits in separate systems run by different teams. More than 800,000 patient safety incidents were recorded in England between January and March 2026 alone (NHS England^[1]). When this information is combined manually, figures from different teams can conflict, with staff often spending more time reconciling those differences than deciding what action to take.

Only 10% of respondents said the information they need is well connected across their organisation, with many reporting that they already hold most of the information they need but are unable to see how it is connected.

According to the report, this is where early warning signs can be missed. A rise in patient falls on a ward, for example, may be logged as a series of safety incidents, while agency staffing levels, complaints about response times and audit results on mobility assessments each sit with a different team. Read together, they may help teams spot possible contributing factors earlier and decide where to investigate. Kept apart, those clues can go unnoticed until problems become serious.

Edward Bellamy, Chief Executive Officer, Radar Healthcare, said: "Health and care organisations aren't short of information. The problem is that it sits in separate systems, so leaders have to piece it together before they can act. That's time spent assembling the picture rather than responding to it, and in patient safety, waiting for the full picture is a risk in itself. The answer is to connect the information they already hold, so leaders can spot the warning signs and act before a patient is harmed."

Dr Dominique Allwood MBE, physician and senior healthcare leader, who serves as a Non-Executive Director at Radar Healthcare said: "In many health and care organisations, information remains disconnected across functions. Patient safety, governance, quality improvement, risk management, workforce planning, operational performance and patient experience are often managed by different teams using different systems, producing different reports for different audiences. Individually, these functions perform valuable work. Collectively, however, they often struggle to present a coherent picture of organisational performance."

The research also found:

• Prediction is the priority: 27% chose better prediction and prevention of quality or safety issues as the capability that would create the most value over the next three years, making it the most popular answer.
  
  
• AI readiness is limited: only 36% feel fairly or very prepared to realise meaningful value from AI in quality, safety and governance. The most commonly cited barriers were information governance and privacy (46%), integration between systems (45%) and data quality (42%).
  
  
• Workforce and finances lead the risks: 71% named workforce capacity among their three biggest risks for the next 12 months, and 60% named financial pressure.

^[1] NHS England, Patient Safety Event Data Quarterly Publication, Quarter 4 2025/26 (January to March 2026), official statistics in development: 804,069 patient safety incidents recorded to the Learn from Patient Safety Events service. https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/patient-safety-data/2025-26/q4/

Notes to editors

Radar Healthcare gathered 199 responses from people working in health and care organisations between 18 August and 18 September 2026. Respondents included 58 from independent healthcare, 43 from NHS acute trusts and 33 from adult social care, as well as mental health, community, hospice and palliative, residential and other settings. Results are reported for all respondents together. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number, and multi-select questions may total more than 100%. The Signal to Safer Care™ framework and recommendations are Radar Healthcare's own analysis and were not tested in the survey.

About Radar Healthcare

Radar Healthcare empowers health and social care organisations to make a meaningful impact on patient safety, quality of care and compliance. By blending digital innovation with real-world healthcare expertise, Radar Healthcare enables providers to not only meet regulatory standards but to actively spot trends, support efforts to prevent incidents, and drive continuous improvement.

For more information, visit https://radarhealthcare.com/

Download the full Signal to Safer Care™ report