NHSA to deliver Chancellor’s £20m funded “Connected Health Cities”

The Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA) formed by the leading northern universities, teaching hospitals and Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) will set up the world’s first partnership using large-scale data to drive public sector reform in health and social care across a 15 million strong population in the North of England. 

The Chancellor has announced £20 million in the Budget to fund four health and social care information projects, “Connected Health Cities”, which will be the first investment of the Government’s “Health North” programme proposed in January to unlock healthcare innovations in the English regions with the greatest health challenges.

This programme of work, which will be delivered by the NHSA, will assemble data, experts and technology in secure locations to generate new information that shapes health and social care services to deliver better outcomes for patients and communities. By analysing integrated information and feeding this back to NHS practitioners, service managers, commissioners, public health professionals, local authority planners, researchers and policy makers, the project teams will be able to identify variations in care and needs.

In each of the areas where this will be developed there will be a focus on at least two high priority NHS care pathways, such as:

• Improving support for families with obese children
• Reducing anti microbial resistance
• Reducing alcohol-related A&E attendance
• Reducing late detection and irreversible damage from chronic kidney disease
• Reducing the risk of breast cancer among high risk women
• Increasing the risk-reduction afforded by treatment with statins
• Reducing relapse and hospitalisation among people with schizophrenia
• Reducing the risk of unplanned hospital admissions among people with dementia

The Connected Health Cities will also enable new medical discoveries by working with the national Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research. This collaboration will ensure that the benefits can be rapidly shared across other regions.  By replicating emerging research findings across a variety of well understood local populations, the UK will be able to perform more powerful studies than are currently possible with national databases, which lack information about local environments, services and other contextual factors.

Professor Ian Greer, Chairman of the NHSA commented:

“This exciting scalable network will build on existing partnerships and investments, as well as the North’s thriving digital and life science sectors, to drive health and care transformation and economic growth – it will deliver the Northern Powerhouse in health.”

Dr Hakim Yadi, CEO of the NHSA commented:

“Health North will be a world first in civic partnerships sharing existing information to improve health and social care.  By following patients through different services and extracting information from many different organisations and databases, we can begin to drive health and social care transformation in the North. ”

Professor Tricia Hart, Chief Executive of South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust commented:

“This Health North investment will deliver deep understanding of the intelligence needs of a devolved city region to develop safer, more cost-effective services, delivering better health and social outcomes for their citizens.”

Fpr further information about the NHSA, please visit http://www.theNHSA.co.uk