Innovating for Improvement aims to improve health care delivery and/or the way people manage their own health care through the redesign of processes, practices and services. The selected projects will be led by clinical teams and will develop their innovative ideas and approaches, put them into practice and gather evidence about how their innovation improves quality. The programme will run for 15 months, including a recommended set up phase starting in September 2017. Each team will receive up to £75,000 of funding to support the implementation and measurement of their project.
The innovative ideas will be tested in health care settings around the UK including primary and community care, secondary care and mental health services.
The 21 projects are:
Listen, Learn and Improve: Using language analysis of patient feedback for near real-time patient benefit
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Using a computer science technique called ‘natural language processing’, this project will analyse patient feedback from the free text element of the Friends and Family Test. This will generate intelligence that will increase understanding of patient experience and enable managers to devise quality improvement interventions.
Nurse-led intervention to minimise adverse drug reactions for older adults in care homes
Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Polypharmacy, the use of multiple medications, is a major threat to the safety of older adults. This project will analyse polypharmacy-related patient safety incidents reported to a national database, and develop a nurse-led intervention to manage medicines for older people in care homes, to reduce adverse drug reactions.
Partners in birth: Empowering women to achieve physiological birth and reduce interventions
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust
This project will deliver a pioneering programme of antenatal education to 200 women and their birth partners, to ensure they are better informed about the birth process and to empower them to influence birth outcomes. It aims to increase physiological birth and breastfeeding rates, and reduce obstetric interventions.
Reducing emergency department crowding through predictive data analytics – flow|ER
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Crowding is a known contributor to mortality, morbidity and poor patient experience in emergency departments. This project will use an innovative software solution to predict the level of crowding the emergency department can expect, and management interventions to reduce crowding by improving use of resources.
Physical health dashboard in the psychosis Integrated Practice Unit
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust
This project will develop a real-time dashboard to enable clinicians involved in the Integrated Practice Unit for psychosis to see all key physical health data on their patients in one place. This will allow clinicians to identify those patients in urgent need and those likely to develop long-term health conditions.
An evidence-based treatment pathway for insomnia in prison: a feasibility study
CareUK
Using active self-management, psychological therapies and peer support, this project will develop and evaluate an evidence-based treatment pathway to improve insomnia symptoms and sleep quality in prison populations. It also aims to reduce unnecessary prescriptions and help reduce medication trading and misuse.
Developing and evaluating a renal learning health system across inner east London
Clinical Effectiveness Group, Queen Mary University of London
The burden of end stage renal disease is greater in London than elsewhere in the UK. This project will develop and evaluate a renal learning health system to increase GP confidence in disease management, and using population data to identify patients at risk of chronic kidney disease progression.
Providing clear insight into patients’ clinical and social care needs by using combined hospital datasets
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust
This project will combine hospital datasets to provide doctors, nurses and allied health professionals with predicted clinical and social outcomes for patients based on previous similar patients’ experience. It aims to improve patient care in the acute setting and streamline the non-elective patient pathway.
Using marketing automation techniques to improve information delivery and lifestyle change in patients with diabetes and non-diabetic hyperglycaemia
Hammersmith and Fulham CCG
As part of a diabetes transformation strategy for North West London, this project will use elements of marketing automation to develop a data-driven approach to delivering targeted diabetes information to different groups of patients, carers and clinical teams, with the aim of improving engagement and patient experience.
A quality registry approach to support patient-centred, outcome-focused, cost-effective care in rheumatology
Healthcare Improvement Scotland
This project will pilot a quality registry in two health board clinics with the aim of improving the quality of care provided to rheumatology patients. The registry will facilitate symptom tracking, self-management and shared decision-making during clinical interventions and recording of outcome measures to support co-production of care.
Addressing non-clinical risk in people with long-term conditions and multi-morbidity to improve health outcomes
Liverpool CCG
The Liverpool Advice on Prescription in Primary care project (APP) was set up to help alleviate poverty and hardship among people with long-term conditions and/or mental health problems. This project will identify care pathways that would benefit from embedding of APP interventions, and test the delivery of APP in the respiratory service.
Innovative presentation of data to improve service user safety, reduce suicides and inform clinical caseload management
NAViGO Health and Social Care CIC
In an effort to reduce serious incidents and improve patient safety, this project will create electronic dashboards for clinical staff with safety indicators to identify patients at risk of suicide, self-harm or premature mortality. A weekly email will also be sent to clinicians to encourage engagement.
A learning health system approach to avoiding acute occupancy crises
NIHR CLAHRC North West London
This project aims to reduce the frequency of critically high bed occupancy states, and therefore improve patient care and experience in acute hospitals. A bespoke local occupancy prediction model will be built, using highly detailed real-time data, which will be used to alert a formal discharge escalation response.
Facilitating heroin smokers’ access to existing community COPD services in Liverpool
Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust
There is a large population of heroin users in Merseyside, and they are at risk of developing severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This project will facilitate access to existing community COPD services by improving communication and engagement with this hard-to-reach population, with the aim of reducing hospital admissions.
My contraceptive choice
SH:24
Half of the pregnancies in England are unintended, causing significant morbidity for women and cost to the NHS. This project will create a safe space for women to make contraceptive choices that combine the shared experience of a social networking site and the individual clinical advice of a contraceptive consultation.
Preparing for surgery: The community pre-habilitation and wellbeing project (the PREP-WELL Project)
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Adverse lifestyle choices such as lack of exercise, poor diet, smoking and drinking are associated with poor outcomes following surgery, reduced longer-term survival and increased health care costs. This project will introduce a community-based service for patients pre-operatively, to make the most of the time before surgery to encourage behaviour changes.
Using live operational data and improvement science to help primary care teams deliver better patient care
Tower Hamlets CCG
This project will provide primary care teams with diagnostic and operational support to help them make improvements that will have a positive impact on the lives of staff and the care of patients. It will use evidence-based quality improvement methodology, using data to identify opportunities for improvement, training and cross-practice collaboratives.
Post-Operative Morbidity reporting using Visual Life Adjusted Displays (POM-VLAD)
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
This project aims to improve the use of post-operative morbidity data by clinicians in order to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. It will involve developing, implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of a near real-time reporting system for risk-adjusted morbidity, mortality and failure to rescue rates after major surgery.
Optimising the treatment of MRSA through the use of computer models to personalise vancomycin dosing
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
Antibiotics are essential for treating sepsis, but achieving target levels in the blood can be difficult in intensive care patients. This project will implement personalised dosing of the antibiotic vancomycin through the use of computer models that use demographic and routinely generated clinical data.
Online integrated care plan
University Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
This project will create patient-held, personalised online care plans for patients living with long-term neurological conditions. Utilising the University Hospital Southampton online patient service as a platform, it will allow access by patients, carers and health care professionals, and will facilitate communication and integration across various care settings.
Person-centred care for children with asthma using non-health care community resources: The SCORE Programme
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
This project will evaluate the real-world effectiveness of a health care model that empowers children with asthma to understand their asthma, self-manage it and participate in activities. The model involves an initial consultation to set goals and optimise medical treatments, a peer-group educational intervention and two blocks of activities delivered by non-health care partners.
