Our vision is that THIS Institute (The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute) will be at the forefront of a movement to mainstream the understanding that improvement activity in healthcare should be based on evidence and should generate evidence.
Our mission is to enable better healthcare through better evidence about how to improve. We will co-create a highly credible and actionable evidence base for improving quality and safety in healthcare, working collaboratively with patients, staff and wider stakeholders.
To learn more about each of our strategic aims, read our strategy in full here.
Our engaged and highly participatory approach to developing evidence is defined by working throughout the research lifecycle with those whose expertise is rooted in lived experience – especially NHS staff and patients. Our findings are valued both in specific clinical areas and for extending and deepening the evidence base for improvement more generally.
We will continue to draw on novel combinations of theories, methods and approaches to generate vital assets that can be used many times across diverse areas and for multiple purposes.
Over the next five years, we will organise our research around three thematic priorities:
We will continue to deliver our research mission in close partnership with all of those who have a stake in the effective functioning of the NHS. Working in this way not only reflects our values, it also contributes to impact by encouraging ownership and engagement from the very outset of every project.
Thiscovery, our highly participatory online platform, will facilitate much of this work. It will be will be a key asset in a novel infrastructure we’re building to co-create the evidence – THIS improvement research communities. These online communities will mobilise the contributions of patients and healthcare staff at scale, helping to build evidence faster and more rigorously.
Relationships across multiple sectors are at the heart of what we do. Our extensive and diverse collaborations, ranging from specialist charities and patient advocacy groups through to national bodies, enable valuable access to existing networks, infrastructures, expertise and lived experience.
We will maintain and nurture existing collaborations and develop new collaborations, building on the trust and mutual benefit already achieved to provide the basis for future research.
Through our fellowship programme, we have helped to expand of the portfolio of healthcare improvement studies, widened access to the discipline and extended our reach and influence. We will continue to recruit themed fellows relevant to practice and policy needs and priorities until 2025.
We will continue to invest in attracting high-quality candidates. We will seek to increase diversity in terms of applicants’ sociodemographic characteristics and disciplinary background. And we will actively cultivate the vibrant community we have created.
To augment and sustain our capability-building, we will scope the development of a new education and training programme.
In order to increase the visibility of healthcare improvement research, we will strengthen our public affairs and NHS partnership activities over the next five years through a campaign targeting policy, practice, and public audiences.
Achieving our mission requires sustained engagement with NHS patients, staff and other stakeholders not only to co-design and participate in our research, but also to disseminate, amplify and act on our findings. So we will continue to use high-quality communications and engagement to increase awareness, participation, diversity and inclusion throughout the research lifecycle.
All our work is underpinned by our values.
We draw on established scientific traditions and develop systematic studies using high quality methods and theories.
We work in partnership in good faith, with trust sustained by genuinely cooperative behaviour.
We work for the public good, including the effective and efficient use of the public funds allocated to healthcare.
We are committed to studying what’s important to NHS patients and staff.
Based at the University of Cambridge and funded by the Health Foundation, we enjoy full scientific independence.
We are respectful in all our interactions with everyone we come into contact with.
From the outset, we have sought to ensure that the evidence, methods, theories and concepts we produce are seen as trustworthy and actionable assets that can be relied upon to form the basis of decisions and actions that can make a real difference in improving the quality and safety of healthcare.
Already we can point to considerable progress towards that aim – evidenced for example by the influence of studies we conducted during the pandemic. Drawing attention to the experiences of patients, carers and staff, this research generated new evidence about the role of remote care, and made vivid the neglected problem of moral injury for staff working in mental health services. This work has already been widely cited, including in policy documents.
