It’s been a busy time here at IH in the run-up to the Integrated Health Awards 2023, but we are delighted to announce our winners.
The Integrated Health Awards a provide a chance to recognise the hard work and forward thinking across our industry, and we hope that you will join us in saying a huge well done to all of our superb finalists for their incredible efforts in supporting change and transformation in the healthcare sphere. A special congratulations, of course, is reserved for our worthy winners.
With no further ado – we present to you the winners of the Integrated Health Awards 2023.
Most Promising Pilot
Healthwatch Essex Limited are the winners in this category.
Healthwatch Essex Limited’s TAG Trauma Card represents the collaborative work, skills and experience of their Trauma Ambassador Group in helping to inform and shape health, care and wellbeing services for people affected by trauma. With aims to address inequality and disengagement within those populations affected by trauma, the Pilot focuses on improving care providers’ understanding of trauma, increasing understanding on its effects, and encouraging trauma-affected individuals to access support. The trauma card is designed to inform the receiver that the cardholder is living with the effects of trauma and is currently being triggered, offering them a choice of three simple actions on the back of the card that they can take to help. Having received positive feedback and with the Trauma Card adopted by partner agencies in Essex including those working in the fields of domestic violence, sexual violence, mental health and addiction, Healthwatch hopes to extend the pilot internationally, having already made contact with agencies in Eastern Europe and the USA.
Learn more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Digital Solution of the Year
ImproveWell are the winners in this category.
ImproveWell is a real-time feedback solution for continuous engagement and everyday innovation in health and care. Drawing on a robust evidence base to promote staff experience and patient care, this digital solution was developed in partnership with healthcare organisations to offer a platform for people to drive change. Comprising capabilities for users to make suggestions for improvement, share how their workday is going, and complete tailored pulse surveys or insights from wider stakeholder groups; ImproveWell’s solution has been well received in a context of growing pressures and demands on teams and individuals delivering health and care services. Results from first-year implementation have been impressive, with the Burns Service at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust showing that the percentage of staff feeling they could easily share their ideas increased from 57 percent to 91 percent; and that the percentage of staff who felt their ideas were listened to increased from 57 percent to 72 percent.
Learn more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Making an Impact
Southwest London Local Pharmaceutical Committees and South West London ICB are the winners in this category.
The WinterFit MECC (Making Every Contact Count) intervention is a collaborative effort between Southwest London ICB, Dr Heffernan, Amit Patel and the Local Pharmaceutical Committees – delivering over 10,000 interventions across 70 pharmacies in just over four weeks. With a focus on prevention in the reduction of excess deaths and illnesses, WinterFit aims to support patients aged 65 and over in the South West London region. Preliminary feedback from both pharmacy teams and participants has been positive, with evidence that the intervention has succeeded in increasing awareness about winter health risks, and in promoting preventative measures and connecting older individuals with relevant support services. Recognising the possibilities relating to WinterFit’s scalability and adaptability, there are plans to expand the intervention to additional locations and areas in which community pharmacy teams can make a significant impact on public health.
Learn more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Best Initiative Supporting Integrated Care Systems
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB are the winners in this category.
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB has established the Community Care Transformation Programme (CCTP) to plan for and deliver a future sustainable model of community care provision, to optimise people’s independence by addressing physical, mental and social needs. As an alternative to standalone services and standardised delivery models which do not reflect demographic needs, the programme is intended to help overcome issues with limited integration, limited considerations of the wider determinants of health amongst existing commissioned services, and issues with workforces identifying more with their employing organisation than with their geographical area. In a developed approach focusing on the alignment of health and social care resources in order to implement place-based community teams, the programme is driven by population health data, and offers an organisational development approach for all community care staff irrespective of employing organisation and role. With the programme engaging nearly 200 stakeholders to date, the aim is to continue to spread this methodology across the entire ICS, having a positive impact on planning, integration and communication.
Learn more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Best Partnership with the NHS
Vygon UK Ltd are the winners in this category.
Vygon UK Ltd developed a system in collaboration with University Hospital of Wales, which allows heart failure patients at end-of-life to be cared for at home with a seven-day infusion treatment. This built on existing work by the hospital to enable at-home infusions for heart failure patients at the end of their lives, making a positive impact on patient experience and reducing hospital admissions. Recognising that the model in place was costly and highly resource-intensive, requiring daily visits from district nurses, Vygon’s Accufuser elastomeric pump was developed to overcome these challenges. A 12-month pilot was launched using the Accufuser – a single-use balloon-infused pump designed to deliver a continuous flow of safe and accurate infusions for a variety of treatments including post-operative pain management, cancer pain management and delivery of antibiotics – to deliver pre-prepared furosemide for heart failure patients. Preliminary data shows patients benefited from a mean average of 3kg fluid loss and reduction in fluid swelling in arms and legs, as well as seeing improvements in pain intensity and breathlessness. With savings of over £1,500 per patient and of district nurse time by 104 hours per patient, work is underway to find out whether it would be possible to batch produce the seven-day stable formulation so that the model could be scaled and rolled out to support more heart failure patients.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Staffing Solution of the Year
Verseone are the winners in this category.
Verseone sought to create a new intranet for Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital, which would encourage higher levels of staff engagement with a personalised experience, add an improved search function and offer an intuitive resource for content to support staff in their roles. In aiming to deliver a personalised experience and earn staff feedback, the trust implemented polls and forms allowing staff to have their say and giving them the option to favourite content, which meant that their interface was personalised from the outset. A clear communication plan was set to enable maximum adoption and adoption rates were high as a result. The design of the intranet was engaging and easy to navigate, with the language designed to speak directly to the user and clear signposting enabling users to access health and wellbeing along with equality, diversity and inclusion hubs. There are plans to introduce a new social element to the intranet through the implementation of new system integrations and staff forums.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Best Initiative for Patients
Yorkshire Health Partners Ltd are the winners in this category.
Yorkshire Health Partners (YHP) mobilised a Children and Young People (CYP) social prescribing service across the East Riding, working in partnership with primary care, local authority, voluntary sector partners and Street Games to support and empower YP to achieve their goals. The service aims to link CYP to the wider community to improve social, mental and physical wellbeing and helping CYP to achieve their full potential, with a team of social prescribers working with CYP aged 11-25 (or up to 25 within the scope of the SEND agenda), through a blend of telephone, face-to-face, virtual and online methods. With a person-centred approach featuring a personalised plan for each young person, social prescribers help to connect them with community groups and statutory services for support, working with the young person to improve areas such as self-confidence and anxiety. These tools can be carried forward by the young person throughout their life, building resilience for the future. Key performance indicators are managed by YHP’s performance dashboard with monthly reports created, and outcomes are agreed with the CYP. In the future, YHP aims to work in collaboration with other areas to expand social prescribing, with funding secured for work with CYP in Hull and York, and hopes to consider how personal health budgets can be used to support social prescribing for CYP meeting SEND criteria.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Transformation Programme of the Year
NHS England are the winners in this category.
NHS England established the South East Annual Check and Health Action Plan Working Group to increase uptake and improve the quality of annual health checks for people with a learning disability. This programme is a response to challenges from previous years, including during the pandemic, which saw annual health checks for people with a learning disability reaching 68.5 percent of locally-set ambitions for the South East. Working closely with the regional Health Inequalities Steering Group, the new Working Group has representation from all ICBs, who are fully engaged with the programme of work required to drive change. Work of the Group to reach people who did not have an annual health check in 2020/21 succeeded in raising awareness, educating, empowering and signposting checks, resulting in 1,632 people having their check or booking an appointment in the first three months. With the South East now on track to achieve the 75 percent NHS England national target, there is the potential that this could be used as an enabler to identifying more effective ways of working that capture data as well as improving communications with PCNs, clinical champions, GPs and community services.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Innovation of the Year
ShinyMind Ltd / NHS Bedfordshire, Luton & Milton Keynes ICB are the winners in this category.
The Shine ‘Wellbeing Prescription’ programme was co-created with NHS clinicians as a new psychological staff programme and innovative digital patient resource in order to support the mental health of primary care staff and patients. Identifying demand within the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB to address the pressures placed on primary care services and staff to provide proactive and personalised care to prevent ill health across patient populations, the new programme has been piloted across 30 GP practices. As well as providing personalised ‘wellbeing prescriptions’ for topics such as stress and anxiety; the programme features daily mental health support and health nudges, along with other interactive resources. Further, the ShinyMind app enables clinician-led advocacy as clinicians support patients in taking a digital wellbeing prescription. Results so far have shown 91 percent of staff reporting improvement in wellbeing, and 83 percent of patients saying that they would recommend the programme to others. The programme will next be rolled out across all GP practices, with the hopes of reducing staff workloads, improving morale, improving access for patients through a digital solution, and reducing health inequalities.
Find out more about all of our Finalists in this category here.
Green NHS Initiative of the Year
Open Medical are the winners in this category.
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust (SASH) revolutionised patient care while championing environmental responsibility by adopting Open Medical’s PathpointⓇ eTrauma and Virtual Fracture Clinic (VFC). Using digitally transformed workflows, the initiative offers significantly reduced patient travel and paper use, resulting in carbon emission savings, whilst still prioritising the highest standards of patient care. In line with the SASH Green Plan, the digital platform provides for end-to-end orthopaedic patient care, with eTrauma including advanced features such as digital trauma take and handover, real-time breach warning, and semi-elective trauma scheduling. Significantly reducing carbon emissions at the same time as streamlining workflows and enhancing collaboration, the trust has discharged over 50 percent of 18,772 referrals since December of 2020 with use of the initiative, resulting in 9,866 saved hospital trips and a saving of 57,220kg in CO2, equivalent to 29 round trips between London and New York. It is hoped that this initiative will help the trust continue to improve patient outcomes whilst supporting the NHS in reaching net-zero emissions by 2040.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Mental Health Initiative of the Year
Emotional ABCs are the winners in this category.
Emotional ABCs initiative aims to empower children with better emotional skills, focusing on teaching emotional regulation to children between the ages of four and 11. The evidence-based programme is available to both parents and schools, and is currently free to teachers and school counsellors in physical schools worldwide. At present, it is used by more than 118,000 schools across more than 120 countries, as well as by therapists, mental health counsellors and hospitals as part of their mental health strategies. It handles areas such as school readiness (including the ability to self-soothe and work through emotions, setting the foundation for social and academic success); frustration and acting out (helping children to recognise their emotions and express themselves); and impulse control (supplying children with simple tools in order to slow themselves down and identify feelings before taking action). The initiative hopes to continue to help children build emotional awareness and control, giving them tools they can use to make better decisions for their present and future.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
Best Elective Care Recovery Initiative
C2-Ai are the winners in this category.
C2-Ai’s patient prioritisation system has been shown through NHS reports to reduce emergency admissions by 8 percent, saving 125 bed-days per 1,000 patients and potentially thousands of years of surgeon time. Aiming to save staff time and reduce pressures, the system is designed to help the NHS to avoid selection bias through its algorithm, incorporating the impacts of the social determinants of health on clinical need, such as the number and severity of comorbidities. It also ensures that risk-adjusted outcomes are analysed post-operatively to ensure that vulnerable groups are not being disadvantaged. Building on 30 years of research and 400m episodes of care from 46 countries, the system uses historic data to consider many different permutations to derive a patient’s medical conditions. This data is then combined with the prospective operation to derive a priority score built on detailed mortality/complication risks for the patient today, and if the procedure is delayed. As well as the 8 percent reduction in emergency admissions, data shows a 27 percent reduction in patients waiting more than 52 weeks; reduced deterioration in patients which would increase length of stay and cost; financial savings; and positive staff response. A Clinical Senate was created to share learning and case studies from the initial project to facilitate rollout across all the acute trusts (funded by NHS England), including the development of an ‘operational playbook’ to share real world evidence of benefits achieved across the region. The findings have been shared by regional AHSNs via conferences, webinars and blogs across the NHS. The approach was also included in the GIRFT best practice guide as an exemplar.
Find out more about all of our finalists in this category here.
That’s all for the Integrated Health Awards 2023!
The team at IH would like to saw a huge congratulations to all of our winners and finalists, and a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the awards process!
