Partners

Barts Institute of Population Health Sciences is a vibrant multidisciplinary group dedicated to supporting global health systems improvement. Embedded in London’s east end, it delivers research, teaching and knowledge translation to improve the health of populations locally, nationally and internationally. The Institute’s strengths include innovation in clinical trials and evaluation methodology, data science and informatics, translational evidence synthesis and implementation research. The Institute hosts major research collaborations including two World Health Organisation Collaborating Centres, an NIHR Global Health Research Centre and the Asthma UK Centre in Applied Research.

The Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) at the University of Aberdeen has a national remit to research the best ways to provide healthcare and build capacity in health services research. The Unit is supported by the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government. Our research comprises two programmes: Health Care Assessment and Improving Experiences of Care. We work on evaluating new models of care, service redesign, innovations and improvements in care, with a focus on both patient and staff experience. In 2017 we won the Queen's Anniversary Prize, recognising the impact of 40 years of interdisciplinary health services research.

National Voices is the coalition of charities that stands for people being in control of their health and care.

We want person-centred care: people having as much control and influence as possible over decisions that affect their own health and care – as patients, carers and members of communities. We want people to be partners in the design of services and partners in research, innovation and improvement.

We help people and organisations to improve the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence they need to engage more effectively and to make their approaches more person-centred.

The Cambridge Engineering Design Centre (EDC) undertakes fundamental and applied research to generate knowledge that improves the design process. We are driven both by intellectual curiosity and industrial collaboration, resulting in understanding, methods and tools that shape design theory and design practice.

Within the EDC, the Healthcare Design Group researches the role of systems thinking in the UK Health Service as a means to deliver safe, effective and affordable care. In particular, we are researching how to define and embed an evidence-based systems engineering culture in the UK Health Service to improve service quality.

RAND Europe is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis. We serve the needs of policymakers, NGOs, charities, academic bodies and other organisations where impartial, interdisciplinary analysis and thought leadership is sought. Our work combines academic rigour with a professional, impact-oriented approach. We work across a range of sectors including health, science policy, innovation and technology policy, education, employment, social policy, and defence, security and infrastructure.

Affiliated to the Department of Health Policy at the London School of Economics, LSE Health is a multidisciplinary research centre comprising 50 staff members with experience in advancing global research in health policy and health economics. LSE Health’s mission is to advance, disseminate and sustain knowledge and understanding through the conduct of research, teaching and scholarship at the highest international standards, for the benefit of the public, patients, policy makers and health professionals worldwide. Our research portfolio covers issues related to health and social care policy, health economics, global health, and health technology regulation & assessment.

The Department of Health for Northern Ireland oversees combined health and social care provision for the population of Northern Ireland (1.8 million). A new Improvement and Innovation Infrastructure is being developed at present, termed HSCQI, and evaluation and outcomes measurement are key elements of its work programme. There are links with local universities and access to population data.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is the coordinating body for the UK and Ireland’s 24 Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties which set standards for the way all doctors are educated, trained and monitored throughout their careers. Healthcare is complex; the Academy’s unique perspective on cross-speciality issues means it has a central role and provides a collective voice when it comes to shaping policy, regulation and opinion to improve the quality of care and the way services are delivered.

The Centre for Implementation Science (CIS) was established in 2014 as part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) South London, a research organisation that brings together researchers, health professionals, NHS managers, commissioners, patients and service users to improve health services in south London.

The CIS is home to a team of expert implementation science researchers, including psychologists and social scientists, health economists and statisticians based at King’s College London. The CIS investigates how best to help ‘implement’ evidence-based practice and clinical research within health services and leads on methodological contributions to the discipline of implementation science – with a growing portfolio of research projects and trials within NHS frontline services, health policy, and more recently within global health.

The Point of Care Foundation exists to improve patients’ experience of care. We help healthcare professionals to see care through patients’ eyes, empathise with their experiences, and make improvements. However, we recognise that health workers can only do this if their own wellbeing is maintained, so we also support them to cope with the emotional and psychological challenges their work presents. We operate through three programmes: the Sweeney programme, which provides training in quality improvement techniques based on patient experience and co-design; our Heads of Patient Experience (HOPE) network; and provision of training for Schwartz Rounds in the UK and Ireland.

Homerton’s brand of free-thinking education began in the East End of London in the 18th century, and was linked to the dissenting movement. While the meaning of ‘dissent’ may have changed, the Homerton of today remains committed to admitting students of talent irrespective of background, and serving society’s needs through research and public communication. Cambridge’s newest college, having received its charter in 2010, Homerton is also the largest college in the University. We thrive on partnerships – with the University, the Department of Public Health, the McDonald Institute of Archaeology, Harris Manchester College Oxford, and now THIS Institute, whose events we host and whose aims we applaud.

The Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge exists to improve public policy through the more effective use of evidence and expertise. CSaP does this by creating opportunities for public policy professionals and academics to learn from each other.

CSaP’s Policy Fellowship programme provides a tailored mechanism for senior policy professionals to engage with research.  The programme is highly prized as an effective way for policy makers to draw on relevant expertise and explore fresh perspectives. In addition to Policy Fellowships, CSaP convenes focused roundtable discussions and runs professional development seminars on evidence and public policy.

The McPin Foundation is a mental health research charity. We believe that people affected by mental health problems have valuable and unique expertise than can be utilised to improve the quality, relevance and impact of mental health research. We call this expertise from experience. Our mission is to champion the involvement of expertise from experience in all stages of mental health research in a variety of ways; from setting the research agenda to the evaluation and dissemination of research. We work collaboratively with others to achieve our mission.

SAPPHIRE’s internationally recognised work uses qualitative methods and theoretical insights from a range of social science disciplines to develop novel and actionable insights to support the practice of healthcare improvement. Particularly renowned for its use of ethnographic methods, SAPPHIRE’s work covers diverse clinical contexts across primary, community, secondary and tertiary care. SAPPHIRE’s distinctive and innovative application of social science theory and methods to practical problems of healthcare quality have led to new insights for professional and policy audiences, and have resulted in high quality academic outputs in world-leading journals and conferences.

Our vision is to nurture nursing and midwifery leaders to pioneer change in patient care, honouring Florence Nightingale’s legacy. We will be the leading scholarship provider for nurses and midwives, recognised for influencing breakthroughs in health and social care policy and practice on a national and global level. We wish to be known for our legacy; our scholars, our professoriate and alumni who apply their learning to modernise practice and influence a smarter approach to health policy, ultimately saving lives and improving quality of life. We will support our scholars, professoriate and alumni to realise their ambition and confidence to generate new knowledge to provoke change and introduce new approaches in nursing and midwifery to positively impact upon their patients, their staff and communities.

Swansea University’s Centre for Improvement and Innovation aims to support healthcare professionals, managers and policy-makers to improve the design and delivery of health and social care. Our collaborative approach enables us to ensure our activities are translational and aligned to meet the changing needs of the health economy. The Centre brings together expertise from a variety of disciplines including public relations, health policy, leadership, systems thinking, change and operations management. Developing the science and evidence to support improvement are fundamental to the Centre’s activities. Key research themes include flow analysis, co-production/co-design of care and the role communication in quality improvement.

The PRactical Obstetric Multi-Professional Training (PROMPT) programme was first introduced at North Bristol NHS Trust in 2000 and with continued year-on-year local multi-professional training, improvements in care have led to a 50% reduction in babies born with low oxygen, a 100% reduction in permanent injuries after shoulder dystocia and improvements in performance for urgent births.

This evidence-based training intervention, which uses a Train the Trainers model for dissemination, was recognized by the National Maternity Review in 2016 and has had a significant impact on quality of life, mortality and reductions in litigation costs. The PROMPT ‘Course in a Box’ has now been shared nationally and internationally, and improvements in outcomes have been replicated in the US, Australia and Zimbabwe.

Collaborative Quality Improvement is a platform for crowdsourced, multi-site quality improvement projects. It takes the concept of national collaborative audit and the methodology which has led to success in national multi-site research projects and applies it to quality improvement. 

We support frontline leaders by providing a mechanism for aggregating local improvement to create system-wide impact. We believe in shared solutions to common problems, real-time shared learning and accelerated improvement through collaboration. 

Our vision is to create an infrastructure of committed individuals and organisations who increasingly benefit from each other’s successes.

The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) at the University of Birmingham is one of the UK's foremost centres for research, evaluation, teaching and professional development for health and social care organisations. HSMC has established a unique reputation as a 'critical friend' of the healthcare community and strives constantly to bridge the gap between research and practice. Renowned for producing high quality high impact inter-disciplinary research in health policy and management, HSMC research focusses on issues and problems facing health and care systems nationally and internationally, adding value through the application of theory and high quality empirical research. 

The Bradford Institute for Health Research is a vibrant centre for applied health research with a distinctive ethos and creative environment supporting high impact research. Our Improvement Academy is one of the UK’s leading improvement agencies promoting evidence-based and clinically-led quality and safety improvement programmes across the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN area and beyond.

Our Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group (YQSR), is a multi-disciplinary group of researchers whose primary focus is the development and evaluation of innovative solutions to patient safety problems. YQSR hosts one of three Patient Safety Translational Research Centres in the UK, funded by the NIHR. Together with the Improvement Academy we are committed to building the evidence base on how to deliver and spread improvements across healthcare settings.

UCL’s Clinical Operational Research Unit is a team of researchers dedicated to applying operational research, data analysis and mathematical modelling to help resolve problems in health care. We are world renowned for delivering high-impact, innovative research co-created with decision makers to improve decisions and support better services for patients and staff. Examples of our recent work include: projects on outcomes after congenital heart surgery in children; supporting family representatives and professionals from different sectors to identify and prioritise improvements to a complex care pathway; evaluating innovation; supporting the inclusion of patient and family perspectives alongside professional perspectives when prioritising outcome measures.

Health Education England (HEE) exists for one reason only: to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to the patients and public of England by ensuring that the workforce of today and tomorrow has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place.

King’s Improvement Science (KIS) is a quality improvement enterprise set up by King’s Health Partners, one of CLAHRC South London’s collaborators, in January 2013.

KIS is part of the CLAHRC South London and formally integrated within the CIS. It comprises a specialist team of improvement scientists and senior researchers based at King’s College London. Its work aims to support improvement science applications within NHS services, including pragmatic and larger scale evaluations. KIS is funded by King’s Health Partners, Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, the Maudsley Charity and the Health Foundation.