The country’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) have come together to deliver the AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare: an online tool that shares proven innovations that are making a positive difference both to people’s lives and NHS efficiency. It is available at atlas.ahsnnetwork.com

Launching today at the Health and Care Innovation Expo, the Atlas of Solutions provides a snapshot of some of the country’s best healthcare innovations, describing the problems they were introduced to address and the impressive outcomes to date. The aim is to freely share these examples to speed and scale up the adoption of innovation across health and care.
With their local focus and national connections, the AHSNs outline the expertise and success of partners from the NHS, academia, voluntary sector and industry who are driving these innovations.

Each example meets one or more of the gaps identified by the NHS in its five-year forward view: improving quality; impact on health and wellbeing; and increasing efficiency.

Case studies in the Atlas include a description of the problem, how it was tackled, the end benefits to patients, populations and the service involved and contacts for enquiries. Case studies include:

• A digital solution that is allowing 40,000 people to manage their own healthcare via supportive text messaging – reducing hospital stays and saving money
• Savings to NHS trusts of £6million per 100 patients taking part in clinical trials through a regional partnership with Quintiles
• Lives saved through the introduction of a novel curative treatment for distressing and debilitating C. Difficile infection
• Over 80,000 people benefiting from use of a simple home test that predicts exacerbations of respiratory conditions, reducing hospital stays and improving outcomes

Dr Liz Mear, Chief Executive of The Innovation Agency and AHSN Network Chair, said: “The NHS is under immense pressure to improve the health of the population and deliver higher quality care with increasingly restricted funds. Adopting new ways of working – whether through joining up services or introducing new technology – is vital to creating a sustainable NHS. The introduction of the Atlas gives us a way to share real solutions to these problems that are showing impressive results.

These solutions can be easily adopted by health and care organisations and professionals to improve the lives of the citizens they serve and meet the challenges faced across health and care.”

Tara Donnelly, Chief Executive, Health Innovation Network said: "We've worked collectively across the Academic Health Science Networks to create the Atlas - a compendium of the best case studies from around the country, to help people spread and scale good work across the NHS. The Atlas is digital and provides a series of solutions which are evidenced, actionable and scalable, to help colleagues with the tough, important task of speeding up the pace of adoption as part of local transformation plans and the Five Year Forward View."

Ian Dodge, National Director for Commissioning Strategy at NHS England, said: "The NHS is clearly great at discovery, but has been much less good at the rapid, systematic spread of those inventions which is why I'm delighted to endorse the creation of this important resource by the AHSNs. The Atlas will showcase the best candidates for spread and wider adoption in a practical way, to help improvers across the country."

The AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Health and Care will grow with additional case studies added as results become available. It can be accessed atatlas.ahsnnetwork.com


NOTES TO EDITORS

About Academic Health Science Networks

There are 15 Academic Health Science Networks in England, established by NHS England in 2013 to spread innovation at pace and scale in order to improve health and generate economic growth. As the only bodies that connect NHS and academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry, AHSNs are catalysts that create the right conditions to facilitate change across whole health and social care economies, with a clear focus on improving outcomes for patients. Their impact rests in the ability to bring people, organisations and resources together quickly, delivering benefits that could not be achieved without these connections.

For further information, please contact Amanda White, Head of Communications at UCLPartners, on 07841 538380 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.