Pushing the boundaries of innovation

As we launch our new animation explaining who we are and what we do, our CEO, Dr Séamus O’Neill, offers a further insight into the role we play in driving health innovation across the North East and North Cumbria.

The healthcare system is complex. It is a world where we need to have the capacity and capability to constantly innovate and improve. Sometimes that means bringing in new drugs or technologies, sometimes it is redesigning systems but always requiring the ability to adapt and change while keeping the services going.

At the AHSN NENC, we are firmly embedded within the region’s healthcare landscape. This prime position enables us to work with the NHS to move things forward for the ultimate benefit of patients.

By working so closely with Trusts and CCGs across the region, we understand the challenges they face. We help find solutions to address these challenges by tapping into expertise from the wider health economy, whether that’s by bringing in expertise from, and collaborating with, industry and academia.

We act as the crucial link between partners to drive forward transformative innovations, which could be products or services, that can lead to increased efficiencies and improved patient safety and health outcomes.

We are trusted by the system to work on its behalf.

We have worked hard over the last six years to build these meaningful relationships and it allows us to reach into different parts of the system to form partnerships that enable us to get things done quickly and at scale.

Our four main areas of focus are: improving population health; supporting economic growth; driving digital transformation; and patient safety and quality improvement. Across all these programmes, our goal is to transform the efficiency and ambition of the NHS and social care for the benefit of patients throughout the North East and North Cumbria.

We are also part of the national AHSN community alongside 14 other regional AHSNs within the AHSN Network. We support each other on a wide range of important national programmes such as PReCePT, ESCAPE-Pain and The Emergency Laparotomy Programme.

Summing up what we do and what we have achieved over the last six years in this two-and-a-half-minute animation wasn’t easy, but it gives an accurate snapshot of who we are and what we are about.

As we say in the film, the AHSN NENC is dedicated to creating a safe space for the NHS, academia and industry to work collaboratively and by doing so we push the boundaries of innovation.

If you’d like to find out more about us, the work we do, or how we might be able to work with you/your organisation in the future, please get in touch here.