REVIEW OF 2021-22
What was delivered in 2021-22?
Wessex AHSN is a key delivery partner for the Dorset Innovation Hub (DIH), formed by University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset Integrated Care System and funded by the Health Foundation as part of the Adopting Innovation programme. We have supported the Hub during the competitive bidding stage, during its setup (October 2021 to March 2022), providing evaluation to attract funding of £470,000 over two years. We have worked closely with the DIH team to provide expertise in horizon scanning, adoption and spread methodologies, workforce development, and evaluation capabilities through our Insight service.
This year the AHSN has also been heavily involved in laying the foundations for a high-performing research and innovation ecosystem via Wessex Health Partners; the Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) for Wessex. AHSCs are designed to integrate research, translation and the systematic adoption into practice of evidence-based innovation through strong integration between higher education institutions and health and care systems. We have supported the work to develop the infrastructure, and the processes to enable more systematic adoption of innovation aligned to local priorities. Alongside Wessex AHSN, the founding partners are Dorset and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Systems, most of the NHS providers in Wessex, the universities of Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Southampton, and the Wessex-wide NIHR bodies supporting research and innovation.
During 2021-22, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust successfully led a bid on behalf of Wessex Health Partners to become one of four geographies in the country to pilot federating data at scale across more than one Integrated Care System, establishing the Wessex Trusted Research Environment (TRE) – now called Secure Data Environments - enabling a secure and publicly trusted learning health system using health data for research. As a partner in this work, we have supported the design of patient and citizen engagement and provided one of the use cases for the project; federating data to provide a real world evaluation of the system impact of adopting FeNO in the management of asthma.
This year we have continued to grow the regional Q improvement expertise community, hosting a series of improvement webinars, providing a platform for community collaboration and learning, and giving members the opportunity to use their expertise in our workstreams.
In late 2021, NIHR and the Accelerated Access Collaborative commissioned an NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme (NIPP) to accelerate the evaluation and implementation of innovation that supports post-pandemic ways of working, to generate insights for local integrated care systems, support service resilience and deliver benefits to patients. In Wessex, the AHSN is working with our local NIHR Applied Research Collaborative to evaluate remote digital monitoring of people with frailty, exploring the impact on health inequalities and embedding co-production with service users. Since November 2021, our Insight team has undertaken a literature review and engagement with stakeholders across Dorset ICS and Hampshire & Isle of Wight ICS to understand the benefits of local changes in remote care, and to inform the project development in line with local priorities.