The meaning of integrated care: a systems approach

In all well developed societies, such as those that we live in, there tend to be strong borders or barriers between different organisations and different professions. People with different kinds of knowledge are kept well apart. So how can weshould we-manage health and social services that are located in different organisations? If we are to improve the capability of a health care organisation to function as an integrated part of a locally driven health and social service system, we need a new model. Traditional models view systems as machines. Instead, we perhaps should approach them as constantly changing living organisms. This is the importance of Complexity science. It helps us understand what happens in dynamic living systems, where many agents are interconnected.