Innovation is our business Improving population health and economic growth in the East of England

Eastern Academic Health Science Network (Eastern AHSN) is one of 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) set up by the NHS in 2013 to spread innovation at pace and scale across the healthcare system. The AHSNs are the only bodies whose role is to connect all partners across our relevant sectors - the NHS and academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector, industry and citizens in our region.

Health innovation is transforming lives in our region and Eastern AHSN plays a pivotal role in shaping that landscape. We are uniquely placed to bring all stakeholders together to translate innovation into reality, enabling the health service to deliver better care to patients, and empowering innovators to flourish and generate economic growth.

Everything we do is driven by these goals. We connect innovators, health practitioners, researchers, companies, third sector organisations and, most importantly, citizens across communities.

Through these partnerships, we ensure the NHS has access to the latest innovations to deliver the best service, transforming the way it addresses the challenges of caring for a growing and diverse population.

With our licence renewed for the next five years, our focus is on driving our ambition even further. We are now working alongside our local NHS organisations on a series of national programmes for health improvement, including through the delivery and roll out of new technologies and in supporting staff to integrate new ways of working. In addition, we aspire to work more closely with the private sector and academia to develop the spread of innovations into patient care. Commissioned and funded by NHS England, the Office for Life Sciences and NHS Improvement, Eastern AHSN is perfectly placed to create the right conditions to facilitate change across our health and social care economies.

At Eastern AHSN we are privileged to work in one of the world’s foremost regions for life sciences and innovation. Our region stretches from Bedford and parts of Essex through to Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk, covering a population of around five million. There are leading business and research centres located across Cambridge, Norwich, Stevenage and Chelmsford. The Cambridge region is home to the largest cluster of health and life science businesses in Europe and some of the world’s most renowned universities.

Eastern England has some of the longest life expectancy in England, but also some of the most pressing demographic and epidemiological issues. Our continuing role is to build and connect expertise in health and life sciences innovation and to translate it into actions that enable us to make sustainable changes for the benefit of our patients, our population and our region.

‘ With fantastic industry-leading businesses, research centres and world renowned universities, the Eastern region is a global frontier for life sciences and innovation and an excellent base for the research and practical application of innovation in healthcare. Our job at Eastern AHSN is to build on and connect this expertise and translate it into actions that deliver positive, sustainable benefits to our patients, population and the region.’

Piers Ricketts CEO, Eastern Academic Health Science Network

Who we are

In the past 5 years (from 2013) / 318,000 people have benefited from Eastern AHSN-supported programmes/ 17 health innovations adopted into the local health system / 9 innovations spread / £83m investment leveraged into the region / 57 contracts awarded to Eastern AHSN-supported companies / 324 organisations took part in our supported projects. We are the Eastern Academic Health Science Network.

Eastern AHSN is a trusted networker, broker and change agent. Our team comprises professionals who have extensive experience of working in the health service, industry and academia, many of whom are experts in their own fields.

Drawing on this valuable resource, we bring the key players of the Eastern region together. These include NHS trusts, commissioners and Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs), universities, local authorities, third sector organisations, patient groups including the East of England Citizens’ Senate, and the wider public and businesses – from entrepreneurs and start-ups to medium and large sized companies.

We work with all these partners to provide better healthcare through quality improvement and the adoption and spread of innovation, with an emphasis on supporting products and services that have been developed in our region.

What we doNetworker, broker, change agent...

Our unique position at the interface of research, enterprise and delivery gives us access to a huge network of relationships and market intelligence that we can leverage to match the supply with demand for new products and services.

Helping innovators to understand and navigate the complexities of the health system, we generate and match the opportunities, the contacts, the funding, the training; in short, the know-how to help them to take their products or ideas forward.

We are networkers

We forge partnerships between interested parties and the NHS, working on an extensive range of collaborations to boost the local health service and at the same time bring benefits to the wider economy and reduce pressures on the NHS.

Our new Health InnX East collaborative platform, www.innovationexchangeeast.org, develops solutions to fundamental health problems identified by our regional NHS. It serves as an engagement hub, announcing new health challenges facing the NHS, inviting innovators to share their creative ideas for tackling them with those affected by the issues, and taking forward the best solutions for patients.

Suicide prevention is the first of those challenges and we are working with innovators, health and care specialists and third sector organisations across the region to find solutions to this complex mental health issue. The second Innovation Exchange will highlight earlier cancer diagnosis, in line with the priorities of the NHS Long Term Plan.

In other areas we have helped a local developer of an algorithm to identify rare diseases to access £500,000 of funding.

And in the Medtech arena, we support and fund early-stage innovations, such as devices and software, that address clinical needs; a total of £2 million has been invested through our partnership with Health Enterprise East in the regional Medtech Accelerator, which has already achieved its first spin-out company.

We host the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare, which is at the forefront of accelerating technologies that meet the needs of the NHS; innovations that include a breathalyser with the potential to detect cancer and bionic hands for children, which are created on a 3D printer. Over five years, SBRI has invested more than £70m in 430 innovative companies - some have gone on to secure tens of millions of pounds of national and global funding - and benefited 1.2m patients.

In addition, we collaborate with digital specialists across the region, including through the Eastern Accord, to deliver transformative change in emerging digital technologies such as electronic health records and AI.

We are brokers

Through our commissions from NHS England and NHS Improvement we deliver a series of national programmes to improve care at a local level, taking innovations that work elsewhere and introducing them into our region. For example, we support primary care staff to use portable ECG devices to reduce the risk of strokes; we are rolling out an electronic medicines programme to avoid errors and hospital readmissions; and we assist mental health professionals working with police to mentor people in crisis.

Our established Patient Safety Collaborative team works closely with NHS frontline staff to improve patient care by encouraging and supporting a culture of safety, learning and improvement. They bring together people from across the region to share best practice and develop their safety skills in areas including maternal and neonatal care and the deteriorating patient.

We offer bespoke leadership and organisational development programmes for STPs to set the right conditions for innovation across the Eastern region.

Working with the Judge Business School at Cambridge University we delivered an Innovation Programme for chief executives and STP leads, enabling them to create an action plan to encourage innovation and manage creativity in their own organisations.

Our track record as a trusted partner with innovators in delivering new technology to improve patient care includes the following projects which we have helped to develop and are supporting:•Pioneeringgenetictestingtodiagnose

familial hypercholesterolemia in primary care patients in Cambridgeshire;

•adigitalapp,developedbyBestBeginnings that helps Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust health visitors to support pregnant mothers across Norfolk, and reduce the load on A&E departments and community clinics;

•ParademicsattheEastofEnglandAmbulance Service NHS Trust who are piloting technology to diagnose suspected emergency stroke patients in Suffolk; and

•LittleJourney,aninteractivevirtualreality mobile app, which is helping to relieve children’s stress as they prepare for day surgery under general anaesthetic.

We are change agents

How we can support youThe right support at the right time

In all these projects we demonstrate our knowledge and ability to support patients, innovators and NHS teams by providing experienced programme managers and clinical or academic experts to test and evaluate a new product or service.

Our wide-ranging networks enable us to find the right settings or patients to evidence and evaluate the innovation. We are keen to scale up our support to our local NHS - STPs, providers and commissioners - by deploying these resources more widely. We want to help you to improve access and quality of care by supporting the adoption and spread of proven innovations.

Programmes can be specific to each STP region or organisation, but we are keen to talk to you and see how we can help.

Our offer to innovators

•Wecanhelpyoutofindtherightdoorinto the NHS – take advantage of our NHS Readiness events and hackathons, our Clinical Entrepreneurs Forum and other specially-tailored networking opportunities

•Youcandrawonourextensivenetworkoflocal and national contacts to enable you to access funds to further develop your product or service

•Wecanshareourextensiveinsideknowledge to help you to arrange a development programme with real-world evaluation, which documents the benefits of your innovation.

•WeunderstandwheretheNHSisheadedand the requirements of the emerging NHS Long Term Plan. We understand how your innovations might address these healthcare challenges and opportunities

•Weknowthepeopleyouneedtotalkto– we can help you to identify and link up with the clinicians, managers, regulators and finance people that can turn your innovation in to a commercial success

•Wecanhelpyoutobecomealong-term partner in solving the region’s healthcare challenges, for example in digital infrastructure and informatics, new therapies and models of care or quality improvement.

Our offer to established companies

Our offer to people working within the NHS

•Wecanhelpyoutounderstandandinterpret the latest trends in technology and innovation in the company of your peers. Take the opportunity to network and share ideas and experience in our targeted events, including Medical Director Masterclasses and leadership forums

•Weknowwheresuccessfulinnovationhas happened in the NHS and elsewhere, and can help you to access and enable it in your own organisation

•Wecansupportyoutoenhancequalityimprovement capacity and capability in the region, including through the Patient Safety Collaborative

•Ourexperiencedprogrammemanagersand clinical or academic experts can help your teams to test and evaluate a new product or service

•Wecanlinkyouwithpatientsandotherkey contacts to help shape your services, either through our partners, the Citizens’ Senate or clinical research groups, such as the East of England Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care

•Ourestablishedregionalandnationalinnovation networks and our involvement in local infrastructure programmes can provide invaluable support.

Unit CMagog CourtShelford BottomCambridge CB22 3AD

T. 01223 661 500 E. enquiries@eahsn.orgwww.eahsn.org @TheEAHSN

Get in touch. We’d love to hear from you