Spanning the River Thames across Thurrock, Havering, and Barking and Dagenham, Thames Freeport (TFP) is a strategically positioned Free Trade and Special Economic Zone created to bring investment, innovation, and opportunity to the region. With an ambition to attract £4.5 billion in private investment, create 21,000 jobs, and regenerate local communities, TFP aims to drive long-term regional investment and productivity.

TFP focuses on delivering projects that drive a healthy local population.

The Freeport region faces complex urban challenges that have a knock-on effect on health and care provision. Preventable long-term conditions are driving economic inactivity and reduced workforce participation, alongside  growing pressure on stretched primary care infrastructure. By investing directly in tech enabled health and care solutions, TFP aims to improve access to early intervention, take strain off the NHS, and support preventative care solutions that boost local productivity.

To implement this, TFP is  supporting scalable, innovative interventions for health and care in the region. This portfolio of projects functions as a real-world testbed for innovative HealthTech and encourages the scaling and rollout of digitally enabled health and care which support more efficient service delivery

By collaborating with technology providers, GP Practices, Pharmacies, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), and local authorities, TFP co-designs and trials these innovations directly with the communities and primary care providers in the region.

We at PUBLIC are proud to be a part of this initiative and celebrate the successful completion of Phase One of our work with Thames Freeport, delivered in partnership with L Marks, Avencera and Care City.

By shifting the focus to workforce health and wellbeing, Phase One has successfully laid the groundwork to improve regional health outcomes, support workforce participation, and secure long-term economic stability for the entire Thames Freeport region. Take a look through the portfolio of health projects that we have had the opportunity to deploy to drive measurable change.

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Portfolio of Health Projects
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1. The Mobile Health Innovation Platform (MHIP Health Bus)

Traditional, fixed preventative health and care models often struggle to reach high-risk populations, resulting in over 7.2 million missed GP appointments annually across England. To operationalise the NHS 10 Year Health Plan’s shift toward community based, early prevention, the Mobile Health Intervention Programme (MHIP) deployed a clinically equipped, AI-enabled mobile unit (health bus) directly into the communities where risk is highest and access is lowest.

Rather than waiting for residents to seek care, over 8-weeks the bus, staffed by qualified medical professionals, utilised geospatial population data to target high-footfall, high need sites across Barking, Dagenham, Havering, and Thurrock. This approach allowed operational capacity to surge from seeing 30 people a week to 50 people in a single day. Across 28 deployments, the clinical team on board engaged 687 residents, 78% of whom had not received an NHS Health Check in the previous five years, and 21% of whom presented with a high cardiovascular risk. By identifying individuals requiring urgent clinical follow-up and diverting them from emergency care, the trial cut NHS costs, highlighted unmet local demands and provided a practical, scalable model for future regional care.

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2. Health AI Mobilisation Centre

In 2025, TFP established the Health AI Mobilisation Centre, a £3.3 million programme delivered in partnership with Together First CIC to accelerate the safe, practical adoption of AI across primary care. The initiative created a pathway from experimentation to scalable adoption, moving AI from abstract ambition into sustainable frontline deployment.

The programme was delivered across two workstreams:
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GP Pilot:

To understand how AI can practically support local healthcare, this project launched a live testing initiative across GP surgeries. The goal was to trial software from 6 AI suppliers' solutions to tackle everyday challenges in three main areas: data management, service optimisation, and transforming patient experience. 

The project was delivered in stages to ensure the technology met frontline needs. First 32 local GP practices reviewed the AI tools and confirmed which solutions would solve their most pressing daily issues. Following this consultation, 18 of those practices fully installed the software and are currently running live trials to test the technology during routine medical practice. Finally, a formal procurement process will result in 3 of the 6 AI suppliers being embedded across GP practices in Havering, Barking and Daggenham and Thurrock.

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Workforce Training:

To bridge the digital capability gap, over 200 health and care workers, including 145 GPs across three councils, received specialist training in AI fundamentals. This blended approach combined 7 self-guided online modules with 7 in-person sessions, successfully shifting frontline confidence in identifying appropriate AI use cases from 39% to 93%.

By linking real-world trials with wraparound, practical workforce training, the Centre has set out to remove the risk of the adoption of health-tech, creating a deployable model for the wider NHS rollout.

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3. Health & Care Data Discovery Work 

The Data Discovery project explored how health and care data is currently shared across the Freeport region, focusing on the links between councils, NHS bodies, and external providers. Through 21 one-to-one interviews with stakeholders including NEL ICB, local authorities, and vendors such as Optum and IQVIA, the work mapped the current data landscape and identified opportunities for more joined-up, secure use of data. A key finding was the importance of prioritising use cases that demonstrate clear value from linking health, social care, and housing data, particularly in supporting earlier identification of population health risks using council-held data.

The project also highlighted structural barriers that currently limit progress, including inconsistent information governance approaches, system interoperability challenges, and constrained capacity and funding across organisations. Addressing these issues will be critical to enabling more consistent data sharing and unlocking preventative, community-based models of care. These insights will directly inform Phase Two, which will focus on developing targeted interventions to improve data linkage and support more effective use of health and care data across the region.

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Looking Ahead to Phase Two

While Phase One focused on demonstrating the value of innovative health interventions and AI-enabled care models in real-world settings, Phase Two is focused on creating the conditions for AI adoption to happen safely, consistently, and at scale across the wider health system.

Working across Barking and Dagenham, Havering, and Thurrock, and spanning both NEL ICB and Essex ICB, the programme will address key barriers to adoption, including governance, procurement, assurance, information governance, and workforce capability.

A key objective will be the development of a shared AI operating model and governance framework, alongside reusable procurement, assurance, and information governance pathways, including DTAC and DPIA processes. By reducing duplication and creating greater consistency across organisations, the programme aims to make it easier for healthcare providers to adopt AI-enabled solutions with confidence.

Recognising that successful adoption depends as much on people as technology, the programme will continue to invest in workforce capability through targeted training and engagement for governance, commercial, procurement, and operational leaders.

Ultimately, at the heart of the programme is collaboration. Through engagement with NHS organisations, local authorities, primary care providers, suppliers, and regional partners, Thames Freeport will co-design practical solutions that support innovation at scale. The ambition is to create a repeatable model for AI adoption that can be replicated across the wider NHS, improving health outcomes, supporting workforce participation, and ensuring the benefits of innovation are felt across local communities.

If you would like to learn more about these projects or our work with Thames Freeport, feel free to reach out to florence.mayo@public.io

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“This isn't a one-year programme; this is the start of a longer journey. This is about growing the bigger prize for the region and its communities, where the benefits of that growth are being felt by the community that live there today, the community that is going to continue living there, and the new communities that will move in.”
‍Tom White, Director of Innovation and Skills at Thames Freeport in Talking GovTech Ep 2