I’ve had an absolutely fantastic time at the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN). As a relatively small organisation, currently employing just over 40 people – I am immensely proud of the impact we have in improving patient’s lives. Our success is built on the strong collaborative working relationships we have across the NHS, academia, social care, voluntary sector and industry as well as the synergies we derive from working in the ‘connected network of networks’ formed by the 15 Academic Health Science Networks across the country.

 I’m extremely proud of what we have achieved - improving outcomes for patients, driving down the cost of care and stimulating economic growth.

I joined the EMAHSN in 2016, having previously worked in the pharmaceutical sector for organisations including AstraZeneca, Sanofi and ThermoFisher Scientific. One of the main things that attracted me to the role was my experience and frustration of working on the other side, and seeing the slow uptake of innovation within the NHS. An example that really sticks in my mind is a medicine that was developed in Cheshire being available to patients in Shanghai before patients in Stockport. This role felt like the obvious way to bridge that gap and to make a difference to the speed of adoption of innovation to benefit patients.

My personal highlight of my time working here is seeing how far some of our innovation programmes have come and the impacts they’ve had. For example, our Atrial Fibrillation programme, which works to prevent avoidable strokes through improving diagnosis and management, has contributed to an increased diagnosis rate and better management of the condition – preventing 167 strokes and 56 deaths in the East Midlands last year. Our ADHD innovation programme, which enables a quicker and more accurate diagnosis of ADHD in children, has in some cases reduced the time to diagnosis by as much as 153 days, having a profound effect on patients and their families. Another highlight includes recognition for our Safety in Care Homes initiative ‘LPZ’ – an audit tool which measures the prevalence of common care issues and helps to educate care home professionals to make improvements to the care they deliver – which recently won the HSJ Education and Training Patient Safety Award.

Since joining the organisation, in addition to my local role as Managing Director for the EMAHSN, I have had the opportunity to hold other roles as part of the national AHSN Network, these include Network Chair (a position I held from August, 2017 to November, 2018) and I’m currently AHSN Network Lead for Economic Growth. I was AHSN Network Chair at a critical time, when the Network was going through re-licensing after our initial five year commission. This was a great opportunity to demonstrate the collective impact of the AHSN network. In our first five years we enabled 223 innovations to spread to 11,000 health and care settings benefiting over 6 million patients. Our focus on innovation helped us to support £330 million of inward investment and the creation of 515 jobs. Lots of work went into our submission, and we were pleased to double our funding and successfully confirm a new commission from the Office for Life Sciences – giving us the ability to further support the UK economy and the creation of jobs. In our first year of the new commission we have turbocharged our work with industry supporting 2,605 companies, enabling 691 jobs to be created, helping 188 jobs to be safeguarded and leveraging £152 million of investment.

Something I have really enjoyed about working for EMAHSN and the AHSN Network is being involved with the entire health and social care system. I’ve found out more about the challenges within the health and care system in the UK than I could ever have imagined. I have been inspired by the dedication and professionalism of the people in the AHSN and from those professionals delivering health and care services, who are so focused on improving people’s lives.

I’ll be forever grateful for the experiences that EMAHSN has afforded me. My new role feels like the perfect extension of some of my current areas of focus as the Medical Technologies Innovation Facility (MTIF) seeks to accelerate the development of innovative medical technologies for the benefit of patients.

Author 

Mike Hannay - Managing Director