Here our Managing Director, Nicole McGlennon, reflects on her first year at the East Midlands AHSN including her highlights, progress and future plans and priorities for the organisation.

Over a year ago now, when I applied for my role, I was motivated by the great potential to make a difference within our health and care system. No-one could have foreseen the events that were to come that shaped a lot of my first year with the Network.

Reflecting on the last 12 months, I can certainly say I feel proud to be in this role and channel our resources and support to help frontline services and colleagues adapt as best they can.

Since March, I have found using our internal expertise to support regional initiatives that underpin STP/ICS operations extremely interesting and rewarding. One example is the work of our Health Analytics and Informatics team to support regional COVID-19 safety cells, using accessible data to aid decision-making around safety initiatives. While it has been undeniably challenging, applying our expertise and dedicated resource within such high-pressure circumstances has enabled me to better understand the depth of our potential, which we will continue to harness going forward.

Reflecting on our progress

I could give reams of information about the impacts of our innovation and improvement programmes over the last year, which are led by our teams and our partners in industry and the health and care system but you can read all about that in our annual EMAHSN impact report and 2018-20 AHSN Network impact report. 

Instead, if I focus on how this year we have moved forward as an organisation, I would like to think that we have accelerated some of our processes. In every decision and adjustment since I joined the organisation, I am trying to think about how we can best serve our stakeholders, this includes engaging in a new pipeline process to improve our ability to take on new innovations and ensuring that we are aligned and focused on priorities and challenge areas where we can have the biggest impact. I think we have taken large steps forward and will continue to concentrate on this over the coming months.

Where our strengths lie

• Our extremely engaged stakeholders – When I started in the role, I was so pleased with the strong and well-embedded relationships we have with our various stakeholders and have tried to build on this as much as I can. We have excellent lines of communication with our stakeholders and I feel confident and comfortable that I can reach out to them when relevant and required, and they can approach me in the same way. This creates an excellent foundation for collaborative working and strengthens our ability to spread innovation that is driven by true regional needs and priorities.
• The mixed experience and strategic leadership across the AHSN Network – Along with the other 14 Managing Directors and Chief Officers across the regional AHSNs, I sit on our strategic leadership group, where we regularly come together to collaborate and provide strategic insight and direction. This group is invaluable as it means we are not just working in our own regional pockets, but utilising the breadth of varied experience and knowledge across our 15 organisations and are operating on a national scale. This has been such a useful forum during my first year, for which the credit is owed to my counterparts at the other AHSNs, and I look forward to giving back to the group by leading on some of our new workstreams, such as Workforce, in the coming months.

What the future looks like

Our future plans and priorities are first and foremost supporting our system with the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and continuing to take forward our work within this ‘new normal’.

Taking on learnings from our work and the work of the wider AHSN Network throughout this time and our collaboration with the NHS E/I Midlands region on themes and recommendations resulting from COVID-19, we are working on a showcase to share this knowledge, to enable collaboration and present relevant solutions. Information will be shared on this work in due course.

On a final note, I’d like take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to my EMAHSN team for their warm welcome and their work over my first year and our colleagues and partners who work with us to bring about positive changes. I look forward to seeing what we can achieve together over the year ahead.