As the NHS and social care providers grapple with deepening inequalities in digital health access, a major US insurer’s programme to place smartphones and tablets directly in the hands of underserved patients offers a practical blueprint and a timely provocation for British care commissioners and technology suppliers.

Closing The Digital Divide In Care Lessons From Across The Atlantic

A programme launched by Elevance Health, one of the largest health insurers in the United States is attracting interest for its unusually direct approach. Rather than assuming patients have the devices, data, and literacy to engage with digital health tools, Elevance has started providing them outright.

What Elevance Health Is Doing

Elevance Health’s Get Connected for Health programme provides eligible members typically those on lower incomes with a smartphone preloaded with telehealth services, health plan applications, and personalised wellness tools, along with unlimited data, calls, and texts at no cost. Through CareBridge, a subsidiary focused on value-based care, the company also distributes cellular-enabled tablets to individuals receiving home and community-based services, offering round-the-clock virtual care access via video, chat, and text across more than 300 languages.

The platform is explicitly designed so that users with limited digital literacy can navigate it without assistance. “Consumer experience is about meeting people where they are and simplifying their healthcare journey,” said Saurabh Tandon, Chief Experience Officer at Elevance Health. “By expanding access to digital tools and services, we are helping remove barriers that can prevent individuals from getting the care they need.”

The UK Context A Familiar Problem

The parallels with challenges facing UK care providers are striking. NHS England’s own digital inclusion guidance acknowledges that approximately 10 million people in England lack basic digital skills, with older adults, those on low incomes, people with disabilities, and individuals from certain ethnic minority communities disproportionately affected. Research from the Good Things Foundation has consistently highlighted that these groups carry the greatest health needs yet have the least capacity to benefit from digital-first service delivery.

Local authorities commissioning home care and NHS integrated care boards face the same dilemma Elevance set out to solve, how do you improve outcomes through digital tools when the populations you most need to reach cannot reliably access them?

Practical Implications For UK Providers

The Elevance model is instructive not simply because it provides devices, but because it bundles connectivity, accessible software, and ongoing technical support into a single integrated offer. This addresses a weakness that has hampered many UK digital health pilots, deploying an app or video consultation platform without ensuring the infrastructure to support it reliably.

For care technology suppliers in the UK market, the implication is clear. Products designed for community health or home care settings need to treat low digital literacy and unreliable personal connectivity as foundational design principles, not afterthoughts. 

A 2022 report by NHS Confederation noted that remote monitoring initiatives were most effective when paired with structured support for patients unfamiliar with digital tools precisely the model Elevance has pursued.

The Future Of Digitally Inclusive Care

As integrated care systems mature, the question of who gets left behind by digital transformation becomes increasingly urgent. The UK’s social care sector, already strained by workforce pressures and funding constraints, has been slower than acute healthcare to adopt care technology yet it is in home care and community settings where digital tools offer the greatest potential to support independence and reduce pressure on services.

The Elevance approach suggests a compelling direction: rather than treating digital access as a prerequisite individuals must meet before benefiting from care technology, commissioners might treat access itself as a care intervention embedding connectivity and device support directly into care packages for the most vulnerable.

The digital divide in healthcare is not a technology problem. It is a design and commissioning problem. For UK care providers, local authorities, and technology companies working in community health, the lesson is straightforward, the most sophisticated digital health platform is only as effective as the connectivity and confidence of the person expected to use it. Closing that gap is not a secondary concern. It is the work itself.