As the national AHSN lead for economic growth, I very much welcome the focus in the NHS Long-term Plan on fast-tracking the development and spread of health innovation.

AHSNs have a crucial role in supporting the sustainability of health and care services as demand increases due to longer life expectancy and population growth. Ensuring that new technology is developed, demonstrated, evaluated and embedded in care pathways is key to speeding up diagnosis, making effective new treatments accessible and improving information flow between patients and services.

The benefits to patients and health and care professionals are clear, but wider than this is the opportunity to stimulate UK economic growth by enabling companies to secure new business and create jobs. The additional investment in Life Sciences announced at the end of last year will help to maximise these opportunities and build on our previous track record of effective collaboration with the sector.

Since 2013, the AHSNs have collectively supported the creation of more than 500 jobs and leveraged over £330m to improve healthcare. Our contribution has seen the spread 29 innovations within the East Midlands, with nine of these also rolled out for adoption in other areas of the country. EMAHSN has also facilitated around £3 million investment in the East Midlands, working with industry partners to explore new markets and grow their businesses to respond.

The NHS Long-term Plan’s commitment to speed up the pipeline for developing innovations in the NHS gives us further opportunities to get proven and affordable innovations to patients faster. A simpler, clearer system to introduce new medtech and digital innovation - standardised across the country - will streamline processes and accelerate our progress. New advisory services for innovators, linked to the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) will provide essential expertise and support in bringing new products and technology to market. You can read the AHSNs’ collective response to the NHS Long-term Plan here.

Whilst funding for AHSNs is guaranteed until April 2023, we must be able to evidence our success in spreading proven innovations across England. This will be our focus as we head into 2019, as well as extending our collaboration with other regional networks to ensure the adoption of innovation and service improvement are addressed in tandem.

Finally, innovators working in the NHS will continue to be supported through our Clinical Entrepreneurs and NHS Innovation Accelerator programmes.

View how we mapped our projects to align with the LTP priorities and themes here

Author

Professor Mike Hannay - Managing Director

Mike is the accountable officer for the organisation and strategic lead for Medicines Optimisation. Nationally, he leads on Economic Growth for the AHSN Network and sits on the AHSN Communications Forum.