The Case for a Connected NHS Integration Layer

How much is fragmentation really costing you?

Across the UK, NHS teams spend thousands of hours every week navigating fragmented systems. We learnt about this working with the NHS team at Everyturn Mental Health (Everyturn), a non-profit who run a national UK mental health team and programmes of support. When we speak to NHS leaders, they tell us: referrals in email inboxes, assessments in third-party tools, clinical notes in EPRs, and risk information in separate platforms. None of these systems were designed to work together, and the result is predictable:

Patients repeat the same information again and again.
Teams manually copy data between systems.
Important updates are delayed or missed entirely.
Staff spend more time reconciling data than delivering care.
People wait longer because services can’t see the same picture.

The pressures are national.

The scale of the problem is hard to ignore. NHS 111 handled over 21.8 million calls last year, and a typical acute trust processes between one and two million switchboard calls annually. Missed appointments cost over £216 million in primary care alone, poor complaint handling up to £1 billion - and in some regions, patients navigate more than ten phone numbers just to get a simple update.

The NHS is trying to solve 2026 problems with 2006 connectivity.

What it needs is not more point solutions - but a way to connect what already exists, surface the right information at the right time, and give staff a single, accurate view. And that's exactly what Everyturn achieved.

How Everyturn built a digital backbone - without replacing a single system

Everyturn Mental Health focused on the things they needed to do their job well. They knew they needed a central CRM which had the capabilities to have strong APIs that connected to other systems to create sustainable and low-cost options rather than ripping out everything and replacing.

Instead, they focused on something that the entire NHS can replicate:

They created a digital integration layer - powered by MuleSoft and surfaced through Salesforce - that connects everything they already had.

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That single decision changed everything:

Digital assessments that once sat in isolated tools now appear in the clinical record.
Referral information flows cleanly into the right systems.
Risk indicators are no longer trapped in disconnected platforms.
Staff get a single view of the patient journey through Salesforce.
Manual re-entry dropped dramatically.
The organisation can scale without adding more admin staff.

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Everyturn proved you can modernise without disruption, unifying information without changing clinical systems, reducing manual work by designing a consistent intake layer, and delivering real outcomes with a small internal team. They fixed the gaps between systems, not the systems themselves.

And if a not-for-profit with limited internal resources can do this… any NHS Trust, Health Board, ICS or national programme can too.

A digital spine, powered by Salesforce, for the NHS

Everyturn unintentionally built something the NHS has been aspiring to for years: a reliable, flexible, reusable digital backbone that allows information to flow where it needs to go.

A “digital spine” in the organisational sense means:

One place where referrals and assessments enter the system

…instead of dozens of shared inboxes and phone lines- we can solve this for the NHS.

One view of patient information, surfaced in Salesforce

…reducing delays and supporting better decisions, we can solve this for NHS patients with our solutions.

One integration layer (MuleSoft) that connects every system

…clinical or non-clinical, new or legacy, we can integrate platforms, and technology together.

One source of truth for operational teams

…so staff don’t have to reconcile different databases, to save people time we can solve this.

One scalable foundation

…that can support new services, reporting needs, pathways and digital tools across the whole NHS, we can use our depths of knowledge to solve this.

This is the same pattern used successfully in policing with 101/999 call reduction which we have years of experience in, where a single digital contact layer delivered transparency, reduced demand, and rebuilt trust.

The NHS now faces the same opportunity: Stop adding systems. Start connecting them.

DISCOVER OUR NHS SOLUTIONS

What NHS teams can do today

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Everyturn's experience gives the NHS a clear path forward:

Pick one pathway - mental health, community care, children's services, outpatient booking — anywhere with a heavy admin load.
Identify where information is duplicated or delayed - shared mailboxes, disjointed referral forms, slow risk visibility, manual rekeying.
Use MuleSoft to join the systems you already have - no rip-and-replace, no disruption, just safe and reliable integration.
Surface the right information in Salesforce instantly - one view for staff, regardless of where the data originated.
Build a repeatable pattern - once one pathway is integrated, every other becomes faster and cheaper to connect.

The NHS has the ambition. Now it needs the architecture.

The NHS has national ambitions. All of these require one thing: connected systems.

Everyturn built that digital backbone with a small team, a straightforward approach, and a CRM that unites data rather than adds to the problem.

If they can do it, the NHS can do it at scale . Let’s talk about how we created this solution and had it ready in only 90 days, across a complex organisation.

The NHS doesn't need more platforms. It needs them to talk.

Fragmented systems, delayed care, repeated data entry - and one organisation that fixed all of it in 90 days. Here's what every NHS team can take from it.