The Academy held its 2016 FORUM Annual Lecture on Wednesday 6 April, which opened with a thought-provoking keynote from Dame Julie Moore on ‘Breaking down the barriers between research and practice to improve productivity in the NHS’.
The 2016 lecture brought together representatives from across the healthcare sector including academia, clinicians, industry, regulators, charity, learned societies and policy makers amongst many others, to discuss how research and innovation can improve productivity and enhance patient care in the NHS. Professor Sir Robert Lechler framed the lecture by emphasising that ‘the UK has a unique selling point of extensive opportunity in research’.
Dame Julie’s lecture demonstrated the widespread benefits of embedding research in clinical practice at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Through taking a transformational approach to process management, from utilising real-time data to measure clinical performance to automated prescribing, there have been significant improvements in quality of patient care and efficiencies across the hospital.
The lecture was followed by a lively panel discussion with Dr Annette Doherty, Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell, Dr Nicolaus Henke, Professor Sir Robert Lechler, Dame Julie Moore and Professor Sir Simon Wessley, which touched upon a range of topics and solutions to the productivity challenge faced in the NHS, including discussion around:
- Creating a culture of change in the NHS utilising high quality leadership and management
- Intelligent and sustainable drug development founded on collaboration and partnership
- Integrating care models across the healthcare system for primary, secondary and social care
- Building workforce capabilities and exploiting advances in technology and
- Overcoming Cartesian dualism and better integrating physical and mental health.
We would like to thank our fantastic speakers and audience for what proved to be a stimulating and engaging discussion. The meeting report and video clips of the lecture will be published on our website soon.
The Academy’s FORUM was created in 2003 to bring together academia, industry and the NHS, and the charity, regulatory and wider healthcare sector, to take forward national discussions on scientific opportunities, technology trends, translational challenges and strategic choices in healthcare. To find out more, please contact sarah.porter@acmedsci.ac.uk.