The CMO’s annual report for 2025/2026 is now live.

Realistic Medicine – Our Path Ahead is the CMO’s sixth annual report and celebrates a decade of Realistic Medicine. It sets out a clear vision for how Scotland’s health and care system can navigate increasing complexity while remaining rooted in careful, kind and person-centred care.

The report opens by recognising that trust is the bedrock of care – earned through consistent, compassionate action and essential to enabling high-quality outcomes and experiences.

Across four chapters, the report explores how we respond to the challenges ahead:

Chapter 1: Systems that Serve
Systems must be designed to serve people- supporting whole-person care that aligns with what matters most, rather than existing structures. This includes creating the cultures and workforce conditions that enable careful and kind care to flourish in practice.

Chapter 2: Harnessing Disruption
Technological change, including the rapid emergence of AI, alongside the planetary health crisis, is reshaping health and care. These forces bring both risk and opportunity, requiring us to harness innovation responsibly while safeguarding the human elements of care.

Chapter 3: Creating the Conditions
Health is created in homes, communities and environments- not just in clinical settings. This chapter highlights the role of prevention, tackling inequalities and working with partners across sectors to build a wellbeing economy – recognising that health is co-created with communities and wider society.

Chapter 4: Doing What Matters
Everyone has a role to play in shaping the future of health and care. Individual and collective actions- however small- combine to create momentum for change, highlighting the shared responsibility that sits at every level of the system.

Chapter 5: Health of the Nation
The final chapter presents key data and projections on Scotland’s health, providing the evidence base that underpins the report’s narrative and reinforces the urgency for action.