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Health Innovation East Midlands Analytics and Evaluation Service team hosted an Innovation Insights webinar on ‘Evaluating healthcare innovation: common challenges and practical solutions’
Evaluating healthcare innovation can be complex; getting it right is essential for successfully adopting new technologies and care models across the NHS and the wider care system.
In this practical session, the team explored different types of evaluation, what they aim to achieve, and the challenges organisations often face when evaluating healthcare innovation. While not all evaluations encounter difficulties, understanding where common issues arise can significantly reduce the risk of failing to generate meaningful insights.
Watch the recording
Access the slides
Find out more about our Analytics and Evaluation support team
Self-Harm is a risk to patient safety that impacts patients physically and psychologically. One of the key patient safety priorities in our Mental Health Programme has been to reduce incidences of self-harm.
In 2024, Health Innovation East Midlands worked in partnership with colleagues at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) on a project which aimed to reduce incidences of self-harm on an inpatient ward. The project was led by a core team of three Nurses from LPT and HIEM and supported by a multi-disciplinary team of experts in data analysis and improvement. In a short period of time, the ward saw over a 40% reduction in incidents. Better yet, this was all achieved without increasing restrictions and staff and patients fed back on how this has positively impacted them.
In this webinar, hear directly from the project team, learn about their approach, what the team did to reduce self-harm on this ward and how the methodology applied can be transferred to other projects.
Watch a recording of the webinar here.
View the slides from the webinar here.
Health Innovation East Midlands and the Midlands Clinical Senates held a webinar to explore key barriers to implementing AI technologies within health and care settings.
Health and care professional seeking to introduce AI tools and technologies heard first-hand from the Clinical Leadership Fellows about the challenges balanced with actionable insights to apply to mitigate these issues, to help realise the potential for AI to support efficient and effective health and care provision.
Watch a recording here and View the slides here.
Familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH) is a common inherited condition, yet it often goes undiagnosed, leaving patients at significantly increased risk of premature cardiovascular disease. Early identification is key - and that’s where FAMCAT2 comes in. Developed and deployed by colleagues at the University of Nottingham, FAMCAT2 is a validated clinical algorithm that uses routinely collected primary care data to identify individuals at increased risk of FH.
This free webinar was led by experts from the University of Nottingham, including PRIMIS, who were directly involved in the development, validation, and deployment of the algorithm, alongside practitioners who have successfully implemented FAMCAT2 within their localities.
Watch a recording of the webinar here
View slides from the webinar here
Every year in England, around 370,000 children under five sustain an injury that requires hospital care*. Around 40,000 are admitted, and tragically, around 35 die. Most of these injuries happen at home, and most are preventable. Families living in disadvantaged areas are at greatest risk.
The Stay One Step Ahead (SOSA) programme, developed by the University of Nottingham in collaboration with Small Steps Big Changes and the Child Accident Prevention Trust, is an evidence-based, co-produced intervention that helps parents and carers make homes safer.
You can access the resources from our webinar below to find out more about the programme, the evidence behind it and the support that is available to help you implement it.
The webinar was aimed at commissioners and managers of child health and early years services, public health teams, child health and early years practitioners and third sector and other organisations with a role in child health, family support or home safety.
View the slides
Access the implementation toolkit
*https://smallstepsbigchanges.org.uk/projects/stay-one-step-ahead-sosa/
Engaging with Deaf People to Achieve Health Equity
Deaf people remain one of the most excluded groups in society, facing barriers to healthcare that lead to poorer outcomes, including higher rates of uncontrolled diabetes and blood pressure, later cancer diagnoses, and increased prevalence of mental health challenges. (Rogers et al., 2024).
This webinar explored the health inequalities experienced by the Deaf community, and the practical steps that can be taken to make services, research and innovations more inclusive. Speakers provided an insight into the barriers Deaf people face, guidance on how best to engage with the community, and examples of how their perspectives can improve services, research, and innovation.
Top Tips for engaging with deaf people PDF
Companion list of useful resources and terminology
Some of health’s biggest challenges can only be tackled by taking a whole system approach. This webinar explored how we have helped Integrated Care Systems (ICS) in the East Midlands to work with key stakeholders to implement system wide changes.
The webinar used a recent project that reduced the risk of harm to patients from opioids as an example, but the 7 step systems approach is transferable to any system-wide change.
NHS England’s Senior Improvement Manager for Medicines Safety, Ruth Dales, introduced the model she developed, and senior improvement leads Kate Hardiman and Richard McBain shared their learning and reflections of implementing it with local systems.
This session showcased two pioneering East Midlands systems and presented project updates on:
Speakers shared exclusive insights and lessons learned on encouraging change, what worked for them, and focused on how these models can be used to inform other health and care services.
HEAR US and I am HEARD are co-produced tools developed by the East Midlands Reducing Restrictive Practice Community of Practice. They are designed to facilitate meaningful post-incident debrief conversations between staff and patients.
This session introduced the innovative I am HEARD and HEAR US tools, exploring how they were developed, their practical applications, and impact. We covered the Quality Improvement methodology used to shape these tools, along with expert recommendations for successful implementation in practice, including use of measurement for improvement . The session also shared valuable skills and techniques to support the effective implementation into practice to improve patient care and outcomes.
Review the slides
This virtual showcase focused on Ambient AI and how this is improving clinical productivity. It provided valuable insight into:
The webinar featured a real-world case study and a live Q&A with NHS professionals, Health Innovation East Midlands representatives, and an Ambient AI provider.
Isla Health shares visual data in patient records, reducing the need for face to face appointments and has shown to improve productivity. In a recent evaluation, results showed that the deployment of Isla Health has helped to streamline processes in outpatient clinics such as Neurology, Dermatology, Allergy, and Burns Care.
This session gave insight into the important considerations when conducting health and care evaluations. Attendees got to hear about Isla Health’s digital platform and how this has been positively evaluated at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH).
This session provided insight into important considerations when conducting healthcare evaluations, with experts from Health Innovation East Midlands sharing their experience of scoping, managing and overseeing evaluation projects. The session included opportunities to bring questions to the team and to find out more about the support we can offer to those seeking to undertake an evaluation within their organisations.
We heard about the exciting Specialist Polypharmacy Multidisciplinary (MDT) Pilot Service evaluation project recently conducted, with the project team (and their evaluators) sharing their project, how they conducted their evaluation and the outcomes identified.
NHS Project Team – Rishi Gupta, Gill Stead, Anna DelfEdge Consulting – Virgina Dall’O, Lucy Pirkle
Link to recording
Link to slides
Top Tips document
Black, Asian, and minority ethnic women face higher risks during pregnancy and childbirth compared to their White counterparts. Black women are five times more likely to die during pregnancy, while Asian or Asian British babies have a 73% increased rate of neonatal death compared to White babies. This highlights the need to ensure that ethnically diverse women receive culturally appropriate, evidence-based information that informs their decisions relating to their pregnancy.
This webinar focused on the challenges that inequalities in maternity pose, especially around informed decision-making. During the webinar, we showcased JanamApp, a multilingual pregnancy app designed for South Asian expectant mothers to address health inequalities.
You are welcome to share these or the link to the recording with anyone within your network. If you have any further questions that you would like to ask, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This webinar explored the fascinating and sometimes challenging subject of measuring the benefits and impacts of innovation in health and care. Delivered by Glen Howard, Head of Analytics & Evaluation at Health Innovation East Midlands, this hour long interactive session provided an overview of some of the issues involved in identifying benefits for patients, workforce and health and care organisations, and once identified, some of the challenges in measuring these.
The evidence behind a programme or innovation is often one of the pillars of success. Evidence reviews - sometimes known as Evidence Synthesis or Systematic Reviews - combine information from multiple studies on the same topic to understand their combined findings. They help health professionals to make more informed decisions about how effective a drug or treatment might be for example. There are many types of evidence synthesis, and selecting the most appropriate method for the specific question being asked will depend on various factors including the resources available, the scope of the review, and the needs of the stakeholders.
This webinar showcased examples of the different types of reviews and provided an overview of approaches covering the pros and cons, highlighting the key similarities and differences between them.
View the slides from the session here.
This session provided insight into important considerations when conducting healthcare evaluations, with experts from Health Innovation East Midlands sharing their experience of scoping, managing and overseeing evaluation projects.
We heard about the Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Virtual Ward Leicester evaluation project recently conducted, with the project team (and their evaluators) sharing their project, how they conducted their evaluation and the outcomes identified.
Speakers
NHS Project Team – Prof. Andre Ng, Suzanne Armstrong
Niche Health Consulting – James Fitton
Being able to create a compelling and clearly articulated value proposition is one of the most common challenges that can become a barrier to stakeholder engagement and health and care system interest. It should be easy to describe and should aim to define the value of the innovation to a range of stakeholders. Watch our webinar to understand the critical role that value proposition plays in the success and adoption of an innovation.
This webinar was delivered in partnership with the Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI), and featured speakers from both organisations sharing what makes a good value proposition and covering the support that they can provide to innovators.
This webinar explored the fascinating and sometimes challenging subject of measuring the benefits and impacts of innovation in health and care. Delivered by Glen Howard, Head of Analytics & Evaluation at Health Innovation East Midlands, this interactive session provided an overview of some of the issues involved in identifying benefits for patients, workforce and health and care organisations, and once identified, some of the challenges in measuring these.
People with a Learning Disability often have poorer physical and mental health than people from other communities, and face barriers to accessing health and care services to keep them healthy. This means that too many people with a learning disability are dying earlier than they should. Good quality engagement, involvement and coproduction with people with Learning Disabilities and their Carers is an important way to redress some of these health inequalities, improve access to services and improve health outcomes.
In this webinar Robyn Lees, Lived Experience Facilitator at IMPACT* and Deborah Wilson, Patient Public Involvement and Engagement Officer at Health Innovation East Midlands share some practical tips on how to engage with people from this community and how to use the ideas and experiences gained to deliver more effective and inclusive services, research, improvements, and innovations.
Watch a recording of the session here.
Read the Top Tips document here.
We heard about the Pan-LLR Integrated Chronic Kidney Disease Transformation Project (LUCID) evaluation project recently conducted, with the project team (and their evaluators) sharing their project, how they conducted their evaluation and the outcomes identified.
NHS Project Team – Rupert Major, Tracy Jesa
Edge Consulting – Laura Dell’Antonio, Lucy Pirkle
The first of our Innovation Insights webinars focused on involving people with lived experience to transform mental health services, and was led by HIEM Head of Improvement Programme Delivery, Kay Khan, HIEM Patient Public Involvement and Engagement Officer, Deborah Wilson and Expert by Experience, Sue Wheatcroft.
In addition to higher maternal mortality rates, women from Black and Asian minority ethnic groups are also at greater risk than their White counterparts of having their pregnancies result in pre-term birth, stillbirth, neonatal death, or a baby born with low birth weight.
It’s more important now than ever to engage with and involve Black and Brown skin women and birthing people and use their experience and ideas to inform inclusive maternity and neonatal research, services, improvements, and innovations.
This session was co-delivered by Shahnaz Aziz, Head of Health Equalities and Involvement at Health Innovation East Midlands and Gemma Poole, Registered Midwife, EDI Clinical Entrepreneur, Core20PLUS5 Ambassador and Co-Founder of the Essential Baby Company. The session is designed for anyone who is keen to hear better ways to engage women from these communities.
View the slides from the webinar here
Read the top tips document
This Innovation Insights webinar focused on tips and techniques for stakeholder engagement, including identifying audiences and then picking the right tools and techniques to develop positive relationships.
As well as a recording of the webinar and a copy of the slides, please feel free to use any of the supporting guides and templates if these are helpful for your own engagement planning.
Access these supporting resources:
As a part of Black History Month, this webinar explores inclusive innovations and highlights key health inequality challenges across the system.
Dr Habib Naqvi, Chief Executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory set the context for the event, highlighting the importance of addressing racial bias and community involvement when co-designing inclusive innovations. The webinar also featured a sample of innovators who are enabling equitable healthcare for ethnic minority communities, along with some of the challenges when bringing their solutions into the NHS.
This session presents an easy to adapt framework for people working within health and care systems seeking to adopt and embed a service innovation or transformation. It is applicable to large and small-scale projects across multiple locations and synthesises learning from “Focus ADHD”, a national programme implemented at pace and scale across England between April 2020 and March 2023 via the 15 AHSNs (Health Innovation Networks).
Once a pilot/real world validation has been tested and found to have merit, it can still be a challenge to embed it and see it spread further. This session will outline key attributes that influence potential for adoption and spread. Considering this from the start will optimise the chance of success and preparedness for when that time comes.
This session focussed on conducting healthcare evaluations, with experts from Health Innovation East Midlands sharing their extensive experience of scoping, managing and overseeing evaluation projects. The event included opportunities to bring questions to the team and to find out more about the support we can offer to those seeking to undertake an evaluation within their organisations.
We heard about exciting evaluation projects recently conducted within the mental health space, with four project teams (and their evaluators) sharing their projects, how they conducted their evaluations and the outcomes identified.
Watch the recordings
This session introduced our 2024 East Midlands Digital Health Accelerator cohort who have been selected to help address these key challenges:
Supporting self-care in the communityTackling waiting listsDigital inclusion and accessibilityHear from each of the five innovators as they introduce their innovation, and outline how it addresses challenges within the NHS and Care systems.
Refugees and Asylum Seekers face disproportionate health inequalities and are amongst the most marginalised and underserved groups in our society, as evidenced in the September 2023 Unique health challenges for Refugees and Asylum Seekers report from the British Medical Association. Previous adverse life experiences, lack of access to public funds, poverty and social exclusion all have a negative impact on health and wellbeing. This, together with communication issues and differing cultural expectations of what services offer and how to access them, are just some of the barriers facing these communities. This webinar featured Debbie Royle, Deputy Director of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum and Halima Hamza, Interpreter and General Adviser for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum, who has lived experience within the Refugee and Asylum Seeking communities. Hear their practical tips on how to engage with communities, and use the ideas and experiences gained from engagement to enable you to deliver more effective and inclusive services, research, improvements, and innovations.