Welcome from our Chair
The importance of system wide working to develop and spread innovation for improved health and care outcomes.
It is clear from the achievements of HI NENC over the previous two five-year licence periods, as well as during the last year, that I have joined an organisation that is very well established, respected and the regional authority on the adoption and spread of innovation.
As the newly appointed Chair, I am able to draw on my wealth of NHS, academic and business experience within the health sector to guide and shape the strategic direction of HI NENC as it continues to drive health and care innovation across the regional, national and international ecosystems.
As HI NENC looks to the next five years, there is huge potential to build on the great work that has gone before and to explore new and exciting avenues for growth.
We work collaboratively with primary and secondary care, the Integrated Care Board, social care, the Third Sector and commercial organisations to drive a collaborative culture of innovation across the North East and North Cumbria region. We will continue to strengthen our position within the region’s health ecosystem and play a leading role in ensuring value adding life and wellbeing innovations are adopted and spread with the ultimate goal of improving the health and wealth of our region.
Innovations in all their forms are crucial to improving the region’s health, supporting our workforce and boosting economic growth. We are committed to the ongoing acceleration of transformative innovation across the health and social care sectors, and delivery of our ambitious plans to achieve better health and wellbeing for all.
Professor Dean Fathers DL, Chair, HI NENC
Foreword by Dr. Nicola Hutchinson, Chief Executive Officer, HI NENC
Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria awarded third five-year licence to drive innovation into the health and social care sectors.
It has been an exciting year for our organisation as we embarked on another five year licence with NHS England, in October 2023. The new licence marked the start of our third, five year commission and reflects the crucial role of innovation within the NHS. It gives me great pleasure to showcase some of our fantastic achievements from the last year. Under the new licence, we changed our name, from Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria, to Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria (HI NENC). We were also delighted to welcome Professor Dean Fathers as our new Board Chair in December 2023.
Although there have been some changes, our vision remains the same and it is a privilege to work with our partners to accelerate innovations that improve population health, support our economy and reduce inequalities. Achieving this goal is only possible by fostering a culture of innovation within the NHS, which HI NENC proudly champions throughout the North East and North Cumbria.
As the health and social care landscape is rapidly evolving to address the needs of our communities, including improving patient safety and ensuring equitable access to healthcare, innovation stands as a pivotal force driving progress and improvement.
To enable us to address key challenges, we work closely with system partners to harness and develop creative ideas and solutions originating from both the NHS and industry sectors. Over the last year, we have supported many innovators with the development and adoption of life changing innovations through our Innovation Pathway.
Reflecting on the year, working with the ICB and becoming embedded within the ecosystem has been a particular highlight. We have several joint initiatives such as the regional Health and Life Sciences Pledge, over 150 organisations have pledged to unite in our ambition to reduce health inequalities, increase investment and promote economic growth for the region.
We continue to deliver a number of health programmes aimed at supporting the reduction of health inequalities and improve health outcomes, including our CVD programme of which you will find out more about in this report.
We are very much looking forward to continuing to work closely with our Member Organisations, partners and stakeholders to support the development and adoption of even more transformative health and social care innovations, for the benefit of the citizens, and economy of the North East and North Cumbria.
This Impact Report aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our initiatives, achievements and the measurable benefits we have delivered over the last year, and reinforce the crucial role we play in driving the development, adoption and spread of innovation across the health and social care services.
Dr Nicola Hutchinson, CEO, HI NENC
Supporting the Reduction of Health Inequalities
There have been a number of exciting health programmes delivered over the last year which have delivered significant improvements and impact across our health and social care system. Here we showcase three of these programmes.
The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board has the highest levels of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and accordingly have continued to have a particular focus on addressing the factors that put our population at risk. In particular, we have projects in primary and secondary care harnessing expertise with our pharmacy workforce.
We have also delivered our Innovation for Health Inequalities Programme (InHIP) which has increased our understanding of the challenges faced by communities when engaging with annual CVD checks. We have delivered this important project in Middlesbrough in collaboration with our colleagues at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration NENC, with the Cardiac Prevention Clinical Network, the Public Health Team in Middlesbrough and the Middlesbrough FC Foundation. As part of this Programme, we have also worked with the company PocDoc to increase access to cholesterol testing for those in disadvantaged communities.
Our Healthy Happy Places Programme has delivered a number of projects which have made a real difference to the lived environment for people in Horden, Ashington and North Shields.
Other national programmes of work delivered in partnership with our ICB have included the National Polypharmacy Programme and our National Insight Priorities Programme (NIPP), which has focussed on supporting primary care to address the challenges of high levels of opioid prescribing. Areas of local health programme work have focussed upon Respiratory, Mental Health and Pain.
Professor Julia Newton, Medical Director, HI NENC
Improving Health and Outcomes for People Living with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors
HI NENC supports people in the region living with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors to live longer, healthier lives.
To achieve this, the HI NENC CVD Prevention Programme facilitates educational opportunities for healthcare professionals, and works in collaboration with system partners on the development of tools, pathways and services, that can be spread and adopted across the region.
Find out more
 | Since 1st September 2023, HI NENC has trained 1125 people in lipids optimisation across the North East and North Cumbria. |
Improving access to CVD Health Checks for Ethnic Minority and Underserved Communities in Middlesbrough
As part of the national NHS England mandated Innovation in Healthcare Inequalities Programme (InHIP), the North East and North Cumbria project focused on addressing health inequalities in cardiovascular disease in Middlesbrough.
The targeted work, led by HI NENC, aimed to increase the uptake of heart health checks for underserved population groups.
Find out more
| Although CVD is preventable, in some parts of the North East and North Cumbria, the condition is the cause of 1 in 5 deaths. |
| Middlesbrough has the highest mortality rate for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the North East – with the disease accounting for more than 1 in 5 deaths. |
Designing the Environment for Mental Health and Wellbeing
Healthy Happy Places acts as a bridge between sectors and the community, to come together to turn unloved spaces into healthier, happier places.
The aim was to use the designed environment to create positive mental health and wellbeing in areas of inequalities in the region. Healthy Happy Places uses a set of ingredients and a creative approach to develop places that are more joyful, calming, and nurturing places to be.
Find out more
| “I went from being unsure about whether to participate to feeling I and others present had a valuable contribution and our voices were heard.” |
Transforming Patient Safety across North East North Cumbria (NENC)
HI NENC’s ambition for the Patient Safety Collaborative fully aligns with the NHS National Patient Safety Strategy which is “for the NHS to continuously improve patient safety”.
As one of 15 Health Innovation Networks commissioned by NHS England to host a Patient Safety Collaborative, the HI NENC Patient Safety team have successfully fostered the regional learning and quality improvement systems needed to deliver five National Safety Improvement Programmes in 2023-2024 covering
- Maternity and Neonatal Safety
- Managing Deterioration in Care Homes
- Medicines Safety (supporting the reduced prescribing of opioid medicines for chronic non-cancer pain)
- System Safety (roll out of the Patient Safety Incident Reporting Framework across Secondary Care)
- Reducing Restrictive Practice
The team worked closely with the NENC ICB and other regional and national partners across health and social care to support the delivery of these programmes and through co-design, co-delivery and co-investment, have generated significant improvement and positive impact for many patients living in the NENC region.
Supporting Patient Safety Initiatives
HI NENC invested almost £100K in regional patient safety initiatives significantly improving outcomes for patients living in the North East North Cumbria region.
Find out more
| 13.9% reduction in volume of opioid prescriptions from Q3 22/23 to Q3 23/24 |
| Number of patients on high dose opioid prescriptions reduced by 18.4% from May 23 to February 24 |
Improving Outcomes for Preterm Babies
The HI NENC Maternity and Neonatal Safety Improvement Programme (SIP) has significantly improved the outcomes for babies born earlier than 34 weeks gestation, due to the highly effective collaboration and best practice sharing between all mat/neo organisations in the North East North Cumbria region.
An effective way to improve the outcome of pre-term birth is to ensure the mother and baby receive a number of evidenced based interventions given before, during and after birth.
Find out more
| Babies born in the appropriate care setting: NENC has been one of the highest performing regions in the UK for this in recent years, achieving over 90% compliance. |
| This achievement has been maintained during 2023/24. |
| NENC has supported the implementation of seven interventions which improve the outcomes for babies born preterm, and has made improvements across all of these. |
Developing a System-wide Approach to Opioid Use in Elective Surgery
A Secondary Care Opioid Reduction Network has been set up across the region aiming to address the inconsistencies across Trusts in opioid prescribing and guardianship when patients are admitted for surgery, to ensure that prescribing protocols are harmonised and good practice is shared across all hospital trusts in the region.
Find out more
| All 8 NENC secondary care Trusts have a pharmacist representative on the NENC Secondary Care Opioid Reduction Network. HI NENC have facilitated the relationships and collaboration |
Supporting the NHS in Health and Social Recovery
Innovation in health and social care encompasses the development and integration of new technologies, practices, and approaches to streamline clinical pathways, improve patient outcomes, enhance the efficiency of care delivery, and ensure sustainable health systems.
Mandated by NHS England and the Office for Life Sciences, HI NENC supports the regional NHS organisations to build a culture of innovation, where innovative ideas can be fostered and progressed.
HI NENC works closely with our NHS colleagues to harness ideas and innovations, arising from within the regional health and care system, and facilitates the development and embedding of these innovations to improve health outcomes and support in health and social care recovery.
We work collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders from across the NHS including staff, partners and members from primary care, secondary care, and the wider health and social care sectors, to identify unmet needs and support the development of innovations to address the gaps, provide equitable access to care and reduce inequalities.
Improving Shoulder Injury Outcomes
A piece of gym equipment has inspired an innovation, which significantly improves treatment and recovery for patients, who present with a shoulder injury in Emergency Departments. Shoulder dislocations are one of the most common large joint injuries seen by Emergency Departments and can be extremely painful and debilitating for people.
Find out more
| Using the chair has led to a 68% reduction in the number of patients who need to be sedated |
| An average reduction time from presentation at the department to discharge of 52 minutes, 31 minutes sooner than before (83 minutes). |
| Before the bench was introduced 57% of patients (n=30) required sedation and the average time to discharge was 3 hours 22 minutes. After the bench was introduced into practice this was of patients (n=31) |
Encouraging and Promoting Physical Activity Amongst our Older People
Rise and Shine was created to encourage a fun approach to physical activity on older person’s inpatient wards, giving them an opportunity to take part in some physical activity when they are ready to prevent Hospital Acquired Deconditioning (HAD), in a fun, sociable way. It is primarily aimed at older hospital inpatients and care home residents.
Find out more
| The game helps patients maintain and improve their mobility |
| The game fosters a more positive atmosphere by boosting morale for both patients and the staff who assist them |
Improving Health Outcomes through the Innovation Pathway
HI NENC is committed to nurturing and progressing viable and sustainable innovations for the NHS and healthcare sectors, to address the many health challenges facing our society.
Developed in alignment with UK Life Sciences Vision, our focus is to drive innovation across the system to solve regional healthcare challenges.
As a key delivery partner of innovation in the health and care sector, HI NENC works collaboratively with our partners and stakeholders to support the development, adoption and scale up of proven innovations through the Innovation Pathway.
Over the past year, HI NENC has worked with regional partners to make significant strides in developing innovation, arising from across the NHS and industry sectors, to improve population health and support our economy, both at a regional and national level.
As one of fifteen health innovation networks, HI NENC played a pivotal role in the national achievement of creating and safeguarding over 1,300 jobs and leveraging over £475 million additional funding. This is a 10% increase in the overall investment leveraged from the previous financial year and demonstrates the huge contribution that health and life sciences industries make to economic prosperity.
To support the contribution at a regional level, HI NENC continues to bring together the wider health and social care sector through the NENC Health and Life Sciences Pledge, which facilitates a collective approach to tackling challenges within the system and to celebrates our unique assets and infrastructure in the region.
Improving Cardiovascular Disease Scanning with an Innovative AI Solution
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes a quarter of all deaths in the UK and disproportionately affects people living in lower-income areas. The North East in particular has some of the highest rates of CVD morbidity, in the country.
If detected and treated early enough, CVD is largely preventable and it has been identified as the single biggest area where the NHS can save lives over the next 10 years.
Find out more
| Diagnostic scans for CVD can be a time-consuming, resource heavy and complex process |
| CVD causes a quarter of all deaths in the UK, the highest rates are in the North East region |
| The Aiatella AI device can measure scan results over 100 times faster, and more accurately, than a specialist clinician |
Fighting Malnutrition with new Sensory Menu
Numenyu® is the UK’s first multisensory interactive menu from Sensmart Limited which combines visual, tactile, auditory and olfactory (or smell) which can help combat malnutrition and dehydration for people in hospitals or care homes.
Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria is collaborating with a range of specialised partners to develop and share this innovation.
Find out more
| HI NENC assisted Sensmart secure funding of £17,000 from the North of Tyne Combined Authority to carry at project at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust. |
Identifying Large Vessel Occlusion Strokes
Upfront Diagnostics patented blood-based diagnostic “LVOne” identifies Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes within minutes, with 95% accuracy. This enables patients to be taken directly to specialist hospitals where they can receive urgent treatment.
Find out more
| The test can increase a patient’s chances of complete recovery by 20% |
| The test saves 97 minutes of vital time on average |
Use digital solutions as an enabler
The Digital Transformation team is now well established across the NENC system. The team take a lead role in a wide range of local, specialist pathway and system-wide governance and interest groups.
This year HI NENC has continued to address digital inclusion, bringing leaders from across the region’s health system together to ensure that health services don’t widen existing digital inequalities. This has included hosting a regional digital inclusion forum and scoping the development of a regional device repurposing scheme, including legal and governance processes. The scheme involves piloting the use of refurbished smart devices across multiple care pathways within the NHS, so that people across the North East and North Cumbria have equal access to devices to manage their day-to-day health.
Within this Report, read more about two Programmes that have built on this year to support NHS primary care services. The Digital Pioneers Programme provides opportunities such as masterclasses and learning events, and includes an expert reference panels of expert clinicians who help to evaluate and support new innovations and innovators. In addition, the remote monitoring programme has supported GP practices to accelerate innovation by testing the use of existing technology in several clinical pathways. This has had a significant impact to free up clinician time from admin processes and as a result, support patients to receive timely care. In 2024/25, there will be an expansion of the Programme to build on this improvement process and develop new pathways.
Going into a new financial year, HI NENC will continue to support digital innovators from both within and into health and care, and continue to focus on enabling staff, patients, and citizens to access and benefit from innovations. The NHS continues to drive towards using technology to improve patient outcomes and experience, and HI NENC has a significant role in ensuring that everyone can benefit from digital transformation and no one gets left behind.
Driving Digital Innovation to Transform Services and Improve Patient Care in Primary Care
Within the North East and North Cumbria, the Digital Pioneers Programme was launched in April 2022 to provide education to the workforce and drive forward digital health ideas and innovations in NHS primary care services.
This included supporting colleagues working in General Practice, pharmacy, dentistry and optometry.
Find out more
| 132 champions trained |
| 12 masterclasses delivered engaging with 708 people |
| 5 working groups established |
| 76 action plans created |
| 100% of attendees would recommend to others |
Accelerating the use of Remote Monitoring Technology in General Practice
As part of the Digital Pioneers Programme, HI NENC introduced a digital accelerator project to help facilitate, design and develop new ways of working across primary care, in a rapid way.
Find out more
| Following the success of the pilot, additional funding has been secured to extend the programme to another 20 GP Practices in 2024/25. |
Supporting the Detection and Treatment of People Living with Chronic Kidney Disease using CDRC
Clinical Digital Research Collaborative (CDRC) and HI NENC teamed up to support primary care teams to use case finding resources. This work is part of HI NENC’s cardiovascular disease programme, which includes a focus on chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Find out more
| 16455 patients in the North East and North Cumbria are uncoded for CKD in primary care *CVD prevent data, accessed March 2024 |
| People with chronic kidney disease are 20 times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than end-stage renal disease |
HI NENC Events
HI NENC run an extensive events and webinar programme. During the last year, (1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024) the team hosted 61 events a combination of face to face and online attended by 4355 delegates. A snapshot of these are shown across on the right:
Trauma Informed Community of Action Conference
More than 250 people working across the UK came together on 3rd May 2023 to share best practice and celebrate achievements at a milestone event in Newcastle hosted by the Trauma Informed Community of Action.
For the first time since before the pandemic, professionals from across the country enjoyed a day of networking and learning at the Trauma Informed Community Conference at St James’ Park.
The conference, which was sponsored by NHS England, and led by Dr Angela Kennedy, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, had Samantha Allen, Chief Executive at the North East & North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB), do an opening address.
Other keynote speakers addressed issues of research, trauma therapies, the role of urban design and a call to action from lived experience.
Behavioural Insights
In 2022, the Innovation for Healthcare Inequalities Programme (InHIP) was launched, providing an opportunity for integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and AHSNs to define regional healthcare inequality priorities and co-design a project using innovation to minimise health inequalities.
In the North East and North Cumbria, a project was delivered in Middlesborough, an area that is recognised for high levels of deprivation and inequalities relating to CVD. As part of this project, the team worked with the NIHR ARC NENC to understand the challenges faced by the South Asian, Afro-Caribbean and other disadvantaged populations in accessing an annual CVD check.
As part of this work to gather behavioural insights into why people do and do not engage with the health system, a webinar held on 29th June covered behavioural insights and how understanding them can improve the care provided.
Great North Pharmacy Research Collaborative Conference
This annual event was attended by over 240 pharmacy professionals who heard from a lineup of expert speakers on 14th July 2023 at the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead.
Chaired by Ewan Maule, Director of Medicines and Pharmacy at North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB), the focus of the conference centred around pharmacy and health inequalities.
The conference provides a platform for the pharmacy community to share ideas and learning, and to recognise and celebrate the work of Foundation Pharmacists from across the region.
Delegates joined from a variety of roles and sectors including community pharmacy, general practice, primary care networks, local authority, higher education and the charity sector.
More than 100 posters were exhibited at the event highlighting the scale of pharmacy research that is taking place across the region.
Bright Ideas in Health Awards
The Bright Ideas in Health Awards celebrated its 18th birthday last year. The Awards celebrate the achievements of individuals and teams working within the NHS, industry and academia, who have risen to the challenge of explaining how, and where, they believe that the services provided to patients can be improved, either through a technical innovation or through better service delivery.
Everyone can play a part in developing innovative solutions to the healthcare challenges that we face every day. The competition, depending upon the category, is open to all SMEs, NHS organisations and academic institutions in the North East of England and North Cumbria. There were ten awards categories last year with some outstanding winners who received a cash prize as well as assistance to develop their innovation.
