Publications

The Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) Improving maternal and neonatal safety workstream supports the Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, which contributes to the wider national Maternity Transformation Programme. This is working to improve the safety, outcomes and experience of women and babies using maternal and neonatal care in England

The Innovation Agency’s Coaching Academy enables health and care professionals to improve culture, quality and safety of health and care through structured learning and development opportunities. Our next programme is sponsored by Connected Health Cities and is suitable for health and care professionals with innovations and/or innovative approaches they want to adopt and spread. Specifically, those that are related to the use of data from, or implementation of, digital technologies that aim to improve health and care.

Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) were established by NHS England in 2013 to deliver a stepchange in the way the NHS identifies, develops, adopts and spreads innovation. AHSNs are predicated on partnership working between the NHS, local government, academia, the private sector, voluntary bodies and other external partners. In the first licence period, the Innovation Agency (the AHSN for the North West Coast), has delivered on its promise to enable improvements in clinical outcomes, deliver better patient experience, drive down the cost of care through innovation and stimulate economic growth.

Our ongoing work to identify atrial fibrillation (AF) has led to more than 500 potential stokes being avoided, saving around £11.2m in NHS resources, from 2014 to early 2018.

Personalising medicine has the potential to completely transform the way we deliver health care. In Cheshire and Merseyside, gene testing has been used to prescribe individualised dosages of warfarin for patients with atrial fibrillation - a heart flutter which causes an irregular heartbeat and can lead to strokes.

Patients in East Lancashire are using technology and an app to monitor their atrial fibrillation (AF) at home. Around 200 people are using a handheld device to test their blood’s international normalised ratio (INR) avoiding the need to visit a hospital or GP clinic.

The Innovation Agency created a North West Coast Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Collaborative to enable GPs to better identify patients with AF and improve management of the condition.

A team of volunteers has been recruited in the North West Coast to help spot friends, colleagues and relatives at risk of a stroke. They are the Innovation Agency’s AF Ambassadors, who are using portable ECG devices to identify people who may have atrial fibrillation (AF) – an irregular heart beat which can lead to a life-threatening stroke.

PATIENT ACTIVATION & SELF-CARE Products and services that support people with an existing diagnosis to manage their condition - providing information, support and advice to maximise wellbeing.

The Innovation Agency is supporting the adoption and spread of innovation and improvement in each of the two health and care partnerships in our region, Lancashire and South Cumbria; and Cheshire and Merseyside.

This independent report was commissioned by the six academic health science networks (AHSNs) responsible for spreading health innovation in the East Midlands; Kent, Surrey and Sussex; the North West Coast (the Innovation Agency); South London (Health Innovation Network); the West of England; Yorkshire & Humber. The views and conclusions in the report are the author’s own

Growing our network by Dr Liz Mear and Gideon Ben-Tovim It is a time of expansion for the Innovation Agency, which befits springtime as we see the first shoots of the new season.

The Patient Safety Collaborative ambition is for improvement to extend across the entire healthcare system in England, so that care is safer for all.

EiSIT has been commissioned by NHS England and was developed by the Innovation Agency (the Academic Health Science Network for the North West Coast). The work was also supported by the Good Governance Institute. EiSIT is accompanied by an infographic, developed by Bayzian, an Economic Intelligence Unit, which is designed to promote the use of research evidence in NHS commissioning decisions and ‘signposts’ commissioners to relevant NHS and other evidence resources.

It is four years since the Berwick Report made a pledge on behalf of the NHS of ‘a promise to learn, a commitment to act’ on patient safety. One of the outcomes of that report was the establishment by NHS Improvement of the Patient Safety Collaborative programme, the biggest patient safety initiative ever undertaken in this country