Occupational Therapy News OTnews November 2019 | Page 52

FEATURE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Overcoming major challenges
with innovative solutions
Chris Taylor and Dr Gillian Ward look at the work of Academic Health
Science Networks – the innovation arm of the NHS in England
S
et up the by NHS in 2013 and relicensed for
a further five years from 2018, the Academic
Health Science Networks (AHSNs) cover
every part of England and operate as the
‘innovation arm’ of the NHS.
In summary, this means identifying innovative
solutions to the major challenges facing our healthcare
systems, then supporting their rapid spread.
Innovations could be a device, a diagnostic, an app,
system, process pathway or programme; basically
anything that improves the quality and safety of care for
patients, supports people to better manage their own
care and enables more efficient health services.
There are 15 AHSNs, each operating within its
own region, working closely with Sustainability and
Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care
Systems to understand local needs and help identify
solutions – bringing people and organisations together
to create an ‘Innovation Exchange’.
This means brokering partnerships across
all sectors involved in healthcare – local NHS
organisations, councils, universities and research
bodies, charities, voluntary organisations and patient
groups.
Crucially, it also involves supporting the innovators
themselves to develop and spread their great ideas
and open doors to the healthcare organisations that
are seeking their solutions.
These innovators cover a broad spectrum of people
and organisations, from small HealthTech companies
and start-ups developing cutting edge technologies,
through to large pharmaceutical companies and also
NHS staff, including allied health professionals – the
‘clinical entrepreneurs’ at the frontline of delivery
who are passionate about spreading better ways of
providing patient care.
Working with innovators and helping them develop
and find new markets also has an economic benefit. In
addition to improving patient care through innovation,
the AHSNs are also tasked with supporting economic
growth.
52 OTnews November 2019
Piers Ricketts
Local focus, national impact
The essence of the AHSNs’ success is their ability to
operate both locally and as a national collaborative:
the AHSN Network. Through this dual local and
national focus, good solutions developed in one
area can be quickly ‘exported’ and shared across
England.
It also means that national priority programmes
agreed collectively by the AHSNs with NHS England
can be rapidly spread nationwide in ways never
before achieved by the NHS.
In the last financial year alone, the AHSNs
supported the spread of over 3,000 healthcare
innovations. As well as benefiting many thousands
of patients this helped create almost 700 jobs and
leveraged £152 million investment for the nation.
Piers Ricketts is national chair of the AHSN
Network and chief executive officer of the Eastern
AHSN. ‘Each AHSN is a trusted broker within its local
system, which means that we can harness the power
of the NHS, academia and industry within a national
network of peers and a portfolio of programmes for
transformation,’ he says.
‘And while we collaborate in this way, we are also
constantly discovering and learning together about
our capabilities and potential as a network.
‘But the real magic happens when there is local
pull for innovation resulting from a clearly identified
need in the system and we work together, bringing all