New Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare aims to help speed up adoption of innovation

The country’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) have come together to deliver the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare: an online tool that shares proven innovations that are making a positive difference both to people’s lives and NHS efficiency.  Access the new tool at: atlas.ahsnnetwork.com

Launching at the Health and Care Innovation Expo, the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare provides a snapshot of some of the country’s best healthcare innovations, describing the problems they were introduced to address and the impressive outcomes to date.  The aim is to freely share these examples, spread best practice and help speed and scale up the adoption of innovation across health and care.

You can watch a video of the launch here: 

Launch of the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare from Health Innovation Network on Vimeo.

With their local focus and national connections, the AHSNs outline the expertise and success of partners from the NHS, academia, voluntary sector and industry who are driving these innovations.

Each example meets one or more of the gaps identified by the NHS in its Five Year Forward View: improving quality; impact on health and wellbeing; and increasing efficiency.

Each case study in the Atlas include a description of the problem, how it was tackled, the end benefits to patients, populations and the service involved and contacts for enquiries. Case studies include: 

• A digital solution that is allowing 40,000 people to manage their own healthcare via supportive text messaging – reducing hospital stays and saving money
  
  
• Savings to NHS trusts of £6 million per 100 patients taking part in clinical trials through a regional partnership with Quintiles 
  
  
• Lives saved through the introduction of a novel curative treatment for distressing and debilitating C. difficile infection (Wessex AHSN and Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust)
  
  
• Over 80,000 people benefiting from use of a simple home test that predicts exacerbations of respiratory conditions, reducing hospital stays and improving outcomes
  

Dr Liz Mear, Chief Executive of The Innovation Agency and AHSN Network Chair, said: “The NHS is under immense pressure to improve the health of the population and deliver higher quality care with increasingly restricted funds.  Adopting new ways of working – whether through joining up services or introducing new technology – is vital to creating a sustainable NHS.   The introduction of the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare gives us a way to share real solutions to these problems that are showing impressive results.

These solutions can be easily adopted by health and care organisations and professionals to improve the lives of the citizens they serve and meet the challenges faced across health and care.”

Tara Donnelly, Chief Executive, Health Innovation Network said: "We've worked collectively across the Academic Health Science Networks to create the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare - a compendium of the best case studies from around the country, to help people spread and scale good work across the NHS. The Atlas is digital and provides a series of solutions which are evidenced, actionable and scalable, to help colleagues with the tough, important task of speeding up the pace of adoption as part of local transformation plans and the Five Year Forward View."

Ian Dodge, National Director for Commissioning Strategy at NHS England, said: "The NHS is clearly great at discovery, but has been much less good at the rapid, systematic spread of those inventions which is why I'm delighted to endorse the creation of this important resource by the AHSNs. The Atlas will showcase the best candidates for spread and wider adoption in a practical way, to help improvers across the country."

The AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare will grow with additional case studies added as results become available.   It can be accessed at atlas.ahsnnetwork.com