Innovation fellows inspire national programme to adopt novel solutions to improve patient care
For the first time, UCLPartners has brought together NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellows and Clinical Associates from NHS England’s New Care Models Programme to share learning and encourage networking between these two national programmes.
In 2014, the NHS Five Year Forward View laid out the vision for the future of the NHS and challenged providers to work together to provide joined up care, demonstrating value for money and improving patient outcomes. In order to achieve the vision set out in the Five Year Forward View, it is crucial that healthcare organisations challenge the status quo and consider new and innovative solutions to challenges across the healthcare system, in order to deliver world class care.
The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA), launched in 2015, is a national programme that supports entrepreneurs to accelerate the use of high impact innovations across the NHS for patient benefit. To date the programme has supported 17 NIA fellows to spread their innovations across the NHS, with 345 NHS organisations now using one or more of the innovations supported by the NIA, resulting in benefits for millions of patients around the country.
NHS England’s New Care Models Programme supports improvement and integration of healthcare services by supporting 50 vanguard sites to develop new care models that will form blueprints for the future NHS. Clinical Associates to the New Care Models Programme are responsible for helping vanguards translate their visions into action. In total, there are 17 Clinical Associates across the country.
This week, UCLPartners invited these Clinical Associates to hear from the 17 NIA fellows about the impact their innovations have had to date. It is hoped that this sharing session will lead to more opportunities to bring the benefits of such innovations closer to patients through new care model communities aiming to tackle the overarching challenge of delivering world class care, improving the health and wellbeing of the population.
Bernadette Kennedy, Clinical Associate, New Care Models Programme NHS England, said: “Hearing about the impact the innovations led by NIA fellows have had has left me totally inspired. These innovations have benefitted so many patients and there is much we can learn from the outcomes to date. This opportunity to share learning and has been invaluable and I hope to be able to work collaboratively with the innovation fellows in my time as an associate.”
Dr Charlie Davie, Interim Managing Director of UCLPartners said: “I hope that this learning session is the start of a close working relationship between the NHS Innovation Fellows and the Vanguard Clinical Associates. By working together, we can spread good practice and bring about positive change for our patients and population, helping to fulfil the aims of the NHS Five Year Forward View”