In this overview of our activities and achievements in the first six months of 2019 we highlight awards won, toolkits produced and new resources supporting clinical innovators.
January
2019 began with us getting our whole team together to guide our priorities over the year ahead. Since then we have expanded in key areas, particularly strengthening our work focusing on industry partnerships and real-world evaluation.
February
Maternity and neonatal teams from across our region and beyond attended our shared learning event. Key speakers included Professor Jaqueline Dunkley-Bent OBE, NHS England’s most senior midwife. She contributed to the video below on the value of these networks in sharing best practice and providing support. We have established a number of similar networks including for emergency department teams and those working in emergency surgery.
March
Our work with the NHS and Roche Diagnostics to increase the uptake of blood tests to rule out pre-eclampsia and improve care for thousands of pregnant women and their babies won an HSJ Partnership Award.
The judges said: “This project showed high levels of innovation and sophistication. This evidence-based project delivered demonstrable improvements in patient experience.”
The Oxford AHSN is now working with all AHSNs on the national roll-out and adoption of these tests into standard clinical practice. Read more here.
This project went on to win more prizes later in the year. Pre-eclampsia is not the only area in which the Oxford AHSN picked up awards in 2019. Other notable successes included our work to reduce strokes caused by atrial fibrillation.
April
Guy Rooney took up his role as our first Medical Director. He is supporting innovation adoption and strengthening clinical engagement with emerging integrated care systems.
We published our first single topic newsletter focusing on improving patient outcomes through key collaborations in mental health. Read it here. A similar publication looking at initiatives in primary care followed later in the year. Read it here.
May
We published a toolkit to help care homes replicate our award-winning Good Hydration! initiative which has successfully reduced urinary tract infections. Download it here.
June
Our Innovation Exchange for clinical innovators looking to access the NHS was launched. Initial calls covered healthy ageing and artificial intelligence. A new call in relation to innovations to tackle childhood obesity will be launched early in 2020. We also linked in with the national Innovation Exchange supported by all AHSNs.
Read part 2 of our 2019 review here