NHS West Midlands - Welcome to our region
NHS West Midlands (SHA) was established in July 2006. We are the headquarters of the NHS locally and act as a key link between the Department of Health and the NHS in West Midlands.
With a population of 5.4 million, our region stretches from Stoke-on-Trent in the north to Worcester in the south, and from Rugby in the east to Hereford in the west. It covers the major cities of Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Telford and Stafford as well as a number of rural areas.
As the local headquarters of the NHS in the West Midlands, it manages 44 organisations which deliver healthcare services, and is responsible for ensuring that the £7 billion spent on health and health care across the West Midlands delivers better services for patients and better value for money for tax payers.
A full list of our organisations and more on our strategic framework, Investing for Health can be found at http://www.westmidlands.nhs.uk/
Innovation is the lifeblood of the NHS. The NHS in the West Midlands employs some of the most innovative people on the planet. We are committed to getting better at supporting innovation, creating an environment in which it can flourish and, perhaps most importantly, ensure that the best, proven ideas are taken up by all of our people and our organisations as fast as possible.
We have a duty to the population we serve to provide the best possible services we can and to do so equitably - adopting best practice quickly and enthusiastically is the way to meet that duty.
NHS West Midlands like all other SHAs has a new legal duty from 2007 to promote innovation in the commissioning and provision of healthcare. We welcome this as innovation is central to what we are doing now in taking forward the regional vision Investing for Health.
Our vision
Through Investing for Health (IfH) published in November 2007, and updated in June 2008, we set out how health services in our region could build on the improvements already made during the previous ten years. It explains how the NHS in the West Midlands is planning for the future. Find out more at http://www.westmidlands.nhs.uk/or read the summary here
Ten areas of joint work with PCTs are key to delivering the strategy and start to change the ways the health service works. All are exploring the use of innovative – both hi tech and low tech - methods to improve health services.
Read more below:
1. Market development for lifestyle risk management services
Supporting the public to make heathier and more informed choices, it has developed groundbreaking lifestyle service tariffs for smoking cessation and expert patient programmes. Ten PCTs signed up to implement from October 2009. Read more…
2a Reducing Excess Winter Deaths
In 2008/9 the project successfully recruited 6000 patients to the Met Office healthy outlook alert service, which telephones patients with respiratory disease to alert them when cold spells are imminent. Read more…
2b Reducing childhood obesity
This project is developing early intervention services such as a dedicated scheme to identify babies at risk of becoming obese children, an obesity pathway for overweight children and serious gaming for 8-12 year olds with Warwick University to reduce childhood obesity. Read more…
2c Reducing Perinatal mortality
Five key performance indicators have been developed to assess the impact of interventions aimed at reducing infant and perinatal mortality in the region. Read more….
3a ‘Year of care’
The project is introducing the national model, Year of Care to deliver a two way contract between patients with long term conditions and their clinician. PCTs in West Midlands are pilots. Read more…
3b Individual patient budgeting
Deliver an approach for the West Midlands to test individual patients budgets with a training programme. Read more…
3c Tele-Healthcare
This aims to collate evidence and inform PCTs on approaches and implementation options for Tele-healthcare and assisted technologies. It will deliver a menu of available technologies for consumers to implement and a web based directory. It is also developing systematic evaluation methodology to increase available evidence and promote spread and sustainability. Read more…
3d Risk Stratification
The development of a risk stratification tool to highlight key patient groups and plan interventions and services around them. Pilot projects have also been started in Innovation Centre PCTs. Read more…
4. Capturing feedback from different client
This looks at the tools available for capturing feedback from different client groups and settings. A practical guide is being developed to inform how Trusts and PCTs gather patient experience information and use it effectively. Read more…
5. Safest and highest quality services
This aims to ensure that services commissioned by the NHS in the West Midlands are of the highest quality and safety in the country. Read more…
6. Providing quality and accessible information on primary care
This work has identified what consumers want to know about primary care services, what good quality services look like and the impact of different types of information on them. It will develop a wide range of information on quality and availability of primary care services which will be tested on staff, patients and professional bodies. Read more…
7. Development of care pathways
This project aims to ensure that everyone is treated in accordance with agreed local care pathways for a small number of high impact conditions, stroke, emergency vascular surgery, TB and Primary percutaneous coronary intervention. Read more…
8. A clear vision for each health economy
A toolkit of best practice is being developed to help PCTs achieve better engagement with staff and the public through their five-year strategic visions. Read more…
9. Workforce transformation
This project will deliver a practical methodology to plan and deliver workforce and skills transformation and support the move to bring care closer to home. Read more…
10. Productivity Improvement Project (PIP)
This project addresses the challenge of obtaining information on service provision along patient pathways together with the cost and quality of these services. It extends our existing PIP in acute care to develop equivalent methodologies for mental health and PCT provider services.
Read more…
Examples of innovation
Early intervention
UHNS-RESPIRATORY INNOVATION 09
Development of a Saliva-based Point -Of-Care bioSENSOR for Chronic Obstructive
Airways Disease (COPD): ‘COPD-SPOC sensor’
Full engagement
Birmingham East and North PCT BENeFIT
BENeFIT Staff Wellness Programme
Worcs acute hospital - e-consent system
Acute operative e-consent system, used by competency assessed professionals, delivering print-on-demand patient and procedure specific consent forms and supporting approved patient information.
South Staffordshire PCT CD Rom ‘Reality – the Real NHS’
Aimed at recruiting the next generation of NHS workers, the CD-Rom provides a glimpse at the action-packed lives of real people working for the health service in South Staffordshire.
Closer to home
Birmingham East and North PCT template leg ulcer telemedicine
Walsall Telehealth Project
This project is a collaboration of NHS Walsall, the Council and Tunstall.
Royal Wolverhampton Hospital - HOSPITAL AT HOME SERVICE FOR COPD PATIENTS
The ‘hospital at home’ service was the ‘brain child’ of a respiratory nurse consultant and was designed ultimately as an integrated care pathway for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
South Staffordshire PCT Expo Elephant kiosks
The Elephant kiosks are a free standing web linked touch screen to access current, national and local information to support patients and the public to navigate services and achieve improved health and well being and helping raise awareness of current public health initiatives.
Quality and Safety
Birmimgham Children's Hospital
There are a selection of innovation pieces of work completed or in progress at Birmingham Children’s Hospital Foundation Trust.
VitalPAC
University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) has deployed cutting-edge wireless technology to enable a step change in the delivery of patient care.
Royal Wolverhampton Hospital CoreVALVE
CoreValve is a novel system of heart valve replacement which does not require the need for open heart surgery.
Royal Wolverhampton Hospital - MANAGEMENT OF PATIENTS WITH AGE
We have developed a pioneering, fast-track AMD clinic which recognises the increasing the role of general and specialist Ophthalmic nurses in counselling and treating AMD patients at multiple stages of the care pathway.
Walsall Hospital- case note tracking system
This is a brand new electronic system that keeps tabs on patient case notes.
Worcesrtershire Acute hospital ICNet
ICNet is the only Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) case management and surveillance package that has been recommended as suitable for use by the UK Health Protection Agency and Department of Health.
Fractured Neck of Femur Service University Hospital of North Staffordshire
A Nationally Recognised Fractured Neck of Femur Service in North Staffordshire
Heart of England NHS FT – Hollier Simulation Centre
A comprehensive training programme of acute medical scenarios for junior doctors across Birmingham. Planned roll out to train dentists, nurses, allied health professionals and multi-disciplinary teams.
Odyssey SelfAssess
This is an innovation that is currently being piloted with students at Coventry University Health Centre.
WellNet Interactive Website
http://www.sbpct.nhs.uk/
NHS South Birmingham has recently launched a new interactive website offering up-to-date information on health services and laying the foundations for offering healthcare services online.
Phase 1 Common Assessment Framework Demonstrator (CAF) site
People in Warwickshire are set to benefit from more efficient systems in health, social care and wider community support services, thanks to a £33 million national pilot project announced by Care Services Minister Phil Hope.
NHS North Staffs Avoidance Team
Local people are being given the chance by NHS North Staffordshire to help shape a major new health project to treat and assess people in their own homes – instead of hospital - in what is believed to be the first project of its kind in the country.
Summary of other NHS West Midlands case studies
Contact us
innovation@westmidlands.nhs.uk
SHA Executive Lead for Innovation
Peter Spilsbury, Director of Strategy and Regulation
Tel: 0121 695 22
Peter.spilsbury@westmidlands.nhs.uk
Regional Innovation Hub, MidTECH
David Gleaves, Chief Executive
Tel: 0121 455 0346
Davidgleaves@midtech.org.uk
Web: http://www.midtech.org.uk/
Our partners
MidTECH
As the NHS innovation hub for the West Midlands, MidTECH’s primary function is to provide the region’s NHS Trusts and PCTs with the expert assistance needed to assess and commercialise innovations and IP. Our performance is measured by the strength of our client base and our success in attracting and commercialising innovations. This includes helping to patent or otherwise protect the ideas, linking up with industries that may help to commercialise them - and aiming to ensure that a share of the profits go to the inventor and the NHS Trust where the projects were born.
Client Trusts across the West Midlands region benefit from our cost-effective innovation management and exploitation services and we assist NHS employees with a broad spectrum of innovations. These range from medical devices and technologies to software and training materials.
Since its formation in 2004, MidTECH has assessed over 300 innovations and concluded over 35 intellectual property and licence agreements. http://www.midtech.org.uk/
Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG)
Including the recently launched Institute of Digital Healthcare at www.digital.warwick.ac.uk/idh
IDH is a five-year £4 million collaboration between WMG, NHS West Midlands and Warwick Medical School designed to deliver real and lasting benefits to patients and the public through the application of innovative digital solutions to a wide range of scenarios
Visit us at EXPO.
Intelligent Health i–House
Utilising the expertise and experience of leading manufacturers, health authorities and active housing associations in the region, Intelligent Health seeks to identify mainstream and cost-effective solutions to support smarter, community-based healthcare. The i-House aims to improve the development of technologies and raise awareness amongst health service providers and create demand from the public. More info on http://www.medilinkwm.co.uk/
Participation in the EXPO
We are delighted to be involved in the first NHS Innovation Exposition, which will be held at the ExCel Centre in London on the 18th and 19th June 2009.
Innovation news
Innovation Masterclass 18th March 2009.
We joined up with SHAs in the East Midlands and East on England to hold an Innovation Masterclass on behalf of the Department of Health.
Visitor Information
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The venue is part of a 100 acre campus, including 3 onsite DLR stations, easy access to the Jubilee Line and London City Airport, parking, on-site hotels and numerous on-site bars and restaurants.
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