Accelerating equitable innovation through partnership
Download the full strategy (PDF)Building a trusted connector that accelerates the impact achieved through innovation.
The NHS stands at an important moment in its journey. The service faces significant productivity challenges, alongside declining public satisfaction and wider workforce pressures. Looking ahead, our goals remain the same: improved health; high-quality service to our residents; delivered through innovation in partnership with industry.
This strategy is written as our health and care system is undergoing profound reform. Constrained public finances, rising demand, persistent health inequalities, and the increasing complexity of population needs form the backdrop to our work. At the same time, national policy signals a renewed focus on prevention, digital transformation, and shifting care closer to the community.
We believe that Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) can act as a trusted connector to realise the impact innovation can have. This leads us to create a new vision for the organisation: A healthy and productive population, with equitable access to innovative health and care services.
In this document, we outline how we will achieve this new vision and deepen our impact in a time of significant challenge and opportunity. The three shifts give innovation not just a role, but a responsibility to help shape a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable NHS and UK economy.
ICHP, alongside other health innovation networks, is uniquely positioned to respond. As the innovation partner for North West London, we bring together clinicians, researchers, data scientists, industry partners, and communities to translate ideas into impact. This strategy builds on what we have learnt over the past 15 years. It outlines how we will mobilise our MissionsPlus model to create the conditions for innovation to flourish; harness our rich data assets; support our system partners with today’s most pressing challenges; and shape the future through targeted investment in advanced technologies.
We look forward to collaborating with all partners for a healthier and more productive population.
A healthy and productive population, with equitable access to innovative health and care services
What we’re trying to achieve
A healthier population, enabled by a systematic focus on prevention, detection and treatment of disease
A vibrant UK economy driven by a productive population and thriving healthcare and life sciences industry
A sustainable health and care service that delivers high-quality care for all citizens
What we believe is important
Cultivate the best conditions for the end-to-end testing and scaling of innovation
Data-driven change by harnessing our capabilities and assets across the innovation lifecycle
Support our members with the problems of today, enabling an NHS Fit for the Future
The future of health through investments in advanced technologies and funding models
as a happy, inclusive, high-performing and sustainable organisation
How we will do this
Convening our ecosystem to achieve greater impact through multi-year efforts on the most complex healthcare challenges
Supporting partners with today’s challenges by deploying real-world evidence, qualitative insights, evaluation and service transformation services
ICHP is a membership organisation founded by North West London (NWL)’s healthcare and university organisations.
As one of 15 health innovation networks (HINs) in England, we help support complex change across the health and care sector.
The 10-Year Health Plan (10YHP) identifies and prioritises action around three shifts: sickness to prevention; care in hospitals to community; and analogue to digital.
The 10YHP acknowledges that adoption of innovation at scale is critical to putting the NHS on a sustainable footing, by increasing productivity and reducing the rising tide of demand.
The national HIN strategy, “Innovating for Health and Wealth”, clearly articulates the central role that ICHP and other HINs can play in supporting delivery of the Government’s NHS reform priorities.
Our new vision emphasises our role in achieving this.
A healthy and productive population, with equitable access to innovative health and care services
What we are trying to achieve
A healthier population, enabled by a systematic focus on prevention, detection and treatment of disease
A vibrant UK economy driven by a productive population and thriving healthcare and life sciences industry
A sustainable health and care service that delivers high-quality care for all citizens
Achieving these goals requires clarity on the tangible actions that need to be taken. We have therefore set out our strategic moves below.
These are the key elements of our strategy which will consolidate and deepen our position as an integral enabler and driver of innovation within NWL and beyond, ensuring that we serve the needs of our partners and deliver real value for our population.
The best system for the end-to-end testing and scaling of innovation
Data-driven change, harnessing our capabilities and assets across the lifecycle
Support our members with the problems of today, enabling an NHS Fit for the Future
The future of health through investments in advanced technologies
as a happy, inclusive, high-performing and sustainable organisation
the best system for the end-to-end testing and scaling of innovation
data-driven change, harnessing our capabilities and assets across the lifecycle
Support our members with the problems of today, enabling an NHS Fit for the Future
the future of health through investments in advanced technologies
Our strength lies in bringing together partners across and beyond the NWL system, as collaboration is essential for driving innovation.
We will continue to strengthen relationships with partners, including health and care professionals, academia, innovators, industry, patients, and carers.
We remain committed to Missions, doing fewer things for longer.
Convening our ecosystem to achieve greater impact through multi-year efforts on complex healthcare challenges. Current missions:
Supporting partners with today’s challenges in real-world evidence, qualitative insights, evaluation and service transformation.
Missions represent a focus on fewer priorities for longer, with the hope of achieving more impact.
Defined challenges that align efforts across the whole system.
Real-world environments where teams formed of different stakeholders and providers can test, learn from, and refine innovation collaboratively.
Innovation is not linear; it involves cycles of discovery, design, deployment and learning.
Taking a more methodological approach to innovation adoption and deployment.
Enabling a continuous feedback loop to evaluate and improve interventions in practice.
Missions are supported by aligned levers and incentives, funding, and regulation.
Harnessing real-world data to transform the delivery of services, from population-based insight into problems to data-enabled real-world change.
We help industry and the NHS access and analyse a unique longitudinal dataset, unlocking insights that enhance organisational decisions.
Social research and public involvement that delivers robust and systematic insights into how people experience and use services.
We help organisations understand the underlying motivations, attitudes and behaviours that underpin effective healthcare delivery. This helps partners design effective products and services.
Robust mixed-method evaluations of innovations, programmes and service changes to measure process, impact and value for money.
We help partners determine the efficacy of implementations and interventions, enabling better allocative decisions of resources
Redesign of services for improved quality for citizens. Covering the spectrum of improvement, transformation and innovation.
ICHP leverages its multidisciplinary team, collectively designing transformational programmes to address large-scale problems for health and social care in NWL and beyond.
In line with the NHS Social Value Playbook, we will create a leading social value innovator offer, including contributions to the NHS net zero ambition.
We will also derive social value from the commercial partnerships and contracts we create in line with the Procurement Act 2023.
Our vision of a healthier and productive population drives us to generate social value through focus on the wider determinants on health. We will use our unique population health assets and our position as a system convenor to work with partners and derive social value. In particular, we will explore:
The external context in health and care demonstrates that we work in significantly unpredictable times…
…therefore, we need a measurement approach that balances enabling holding ourselves to account, whilst also facilitating agile changes as initiatives evolve.
We are taking two approaches to measurement:
If our strategy reflects challenges you are working on, or opportunities you want to explore, please get in touch.
