News

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the AHSN Network, which coincides with the NHS’s 75th birthday. Since the establishment of the AHSNs in 2013, we have led on programmes and initiatives working with innovators, academia and our NHS colleagues to systematically identify and adopt innovative health and care solutions that reflect the diversity and meet the needs of our local populations.

The report summarises our work through partnership working, addressing health inequalities, improving patient safety and care outcomes, increasing efficiency of the workforce, supporting innovators at a local, national and international level and addressing key cross-cutting priorities.

Partnering for success

Over the years we have adapted and aligned our work to support our Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to identify, introduce and develop innovations that help improve outcomes for local people whist continuing to come together as a national network to spread promising solutions at scale and deliver national programmes that address national and local priorities.

The report highlights examples of how we work together strategically with partners from across the health and care system, industry and academia to maximise the impact it has for its stakeholders.

Remote monitoring and virtual wards – delivering care into people’s homes

We have been working intensively with colleagues across our three ICSs, NHS partners and innovators to bring new and enhanced virtual wards and remote monitoring technologies to the region. Commissioned by NHSX we implemented three innovations – TytoCare, Docobo and HealthCall – into a wide variety of services, pathways, care settings and patient cohorts.

We supported the adoption and implementation of remote monitoring solutions across 100 sites benefiting 4,289 patients. We helped avoid 327 unnecessary visits from patients to a variety of care settings including GPs, outpatient appointments, A&E and other services freeing up frontline staff and reducing costs.

Based on our experience of working with colleagues across different sites to rollout these innovations, we have created and shared a suite of resources encompassing our practical lessons learnt and top tips in a series structured around the five main stages of implementation: Start, Engage, Deliver, Embed, Sustain.

Improving asthma care

More appropriate diagnosis, management and referral of patients needing further specialist input is helping to reduce asthma attacks, asthma-related hospital admissions and the use of steroids, known to have long-term side effects. Over the past two years we have implemented four crucial projects to help improve asthma care benefitting more than 21,600 patients.

Supporting innovators

We are also commissioned by the Government’s Office for Life Sciences (OLS) to support health innovators to discover, develop and deploy innovations that answer NHS and social care challenges and priorities. In 2022-23 we have supported 383 companies with innovative health and care products and solutions. As a result of this support, £57.7 million of investment has been leveraged.

This year we have been able to expand our digital health accelerator programme, Propel@YH, through the extension of our Boot Camp. This has enabled international innovators to bring ground-breaking health technology into the region.

Cross cutting priorities

Several themes underpin the AHSN’s work programmes and priorities, which are presented in the report. These include equality, diversity and inclusion; patient and public involvement, environmental sustainability, digital solutions and artificial intelligence; health inequalities; workforce; and improving patient safety.

Richard Stubbs, Yorkshire & Humber AHSN CEO and Vice Chair of the AHSN Network, said: “I would like to thank all our stakeholders and partners for their continued support this year. We know that our achievements are only possible by working together. We look forward to collaborating with you in the year ahead as we continue to work together and support our ICSs in their ambition to create a healthy, equitable, safe and sustainable society.

“We will continue to champion and support scale-up of the best healthcare innovations to improve health, support the NHS and achieve economic growth.”

Read the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN 2022-23 Impact Report.