Improving Surgery Readiness at Scale with the NHS

The North East London Health & Care Partnership serves more than 2 million people across 8 local authority areas. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, elective surgery backlogs became a system-wide constraint. Not due to lack of surgical capacity, but because many patients reached the pathway unprepared for surgery, leading to delays, cancellations, and extended hospital stays.

To address this, Sword Intelligence was deployed to identify, engage, and operationally prepare patients ahead of surgery, at scale and without adding clinical headcount. The program focused on improving patients’ physical and mental readiness through structured, ongoing engagement, while continuously generating readiness signals that informed operational decisions.

By shifting preparation upstream and standardizing how readiness was assessed and improved, NE London was able to convert more patients from “unfit” to surgery-ready, reduce length of stay, and relieve pressure across surgical pathways.