Improving outcomes
Delivering health and care change programmes with a focus on long-term conditions and mental health to improve health outcomes.
Our work to improve outcomes this year has focused on making practical changes to services in areas such as healthy ageing, mental health and long-term conditions. We have continued to support care homes through leadership programmes, use of digital tools and stronger joint working, helping to improve care for residents and reduce pressure on services.
We have also explored how digital tools can support children and young people’s mental health, improved how services work together across primary and secondary care, and strengthened how people with lived experience are involved in our work. Our work on dementia and obesity pathways has helped identify new opportunities to improve care and support local partners to take these forward.
Care home support
This year we established London’s first Learning Network for London’s Care Home GPs, as part of our continued support to care homes.
The opening meeting attracted almost 90 GPs and focused on improving collaboration between care homes and the London Ambulance Service. Participants commented on the role the network will play in addressing the isolation often felt by GPs who deliver care home support and its role in facilitating information-sharing and collective problem-solving.
Our support for leadership development and quality improvement in care homes also continued, with the seventh Care Home Pioneer programme and a series of bespoke professional development sessions for alumni of the programme. Alumni have implemented a range of digital innovations, including Tympa Health, Doccla, and PainChek.
We also hosted a roundtable focusing on reducing falls in August to bring together care home managers, with leads for care homes from Integrated Care Boards and local authorities. Roundtable participants shared their experiences of implementing technology designed to improve detection and reduce incidence of falls in care homes.
The discussion and subsequent report highlighted overall broad support for falls detection and prevention technologies in care homes, with early evidence showing benefits for residents, staff, and the wider system. This included reductions in night-time falls, fewer unwitnessed falls, and improved sleep for residents due to less intrusive monitoring.
In March, we organised and delivered a conference that showcased and celebrated initiatives led and commissioned by South West London Integrated Care Board to support care homes in recent years. A comprehensive programme of support for care homes over several years has demonstrated significant improvements in care for residents. Widespread implementation of digital care records, and London’s Universal Care Plan, as well as introduction of virtual remote health monitoring systems have led to improved communication between care home staff with health services, resulting in a 39% lower rate of A&E attendances from care homes in Sutton, and 16% lower rate of unplanned hospital admissions from care homes in Kingston and Richmond.
Children and young people’s digital mental health technologies
Driven by unprecedented demand for children and young people’s mental health services, alongside rapid growth of the digital mental health technologies this project explored how digital products could support children and young people by strengthening care pathways and addressing challenges associated with long Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) waiting lists.
Building on findings from a 2024-25 discovery project, the Health Innovation Network South London hosted a roundtable discussion in July 2025, chaired by Professor Andrew George, to discuss the areas of opportunity for digital mental health technologies in children and young people.
Informed by these outcomes, and a health inequalities assessment, we conducted further stakeholder engagement and in 2025-26 130 stakeholders took part in 20 hours’ worth of structured focus groups and co-design workshops, which we facilitated in partnership with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. Forty percent of participants were children and young people or parents and carers with lived experience of CAMHS. Others included schools, primary care, voluntary community and social enterprise, local authority and CAMHS services.
Participants highlighted opportunities for digital tools to:
- Provide earlier support
- Improve pathway navigation
- Improve communication between services
- Enable ‘active’ waiting
- Enhance scalability
- Expand access to a range of resources
- Add value at key moments from prevention through to discharge.
The South East London Primary and Secondary Care Interface
The interface between primary and secondary care has a big impact on how patients experience their care and the efficiency of NHS services.
In response to locally identified frustrations from both patients and clinicians, and national policy directives, South East London Integrated Care Service developed a consensus document to describe good interface working for south east London.
Throughout 2025/26, the Heath Innovation Network South London has worked with the South East London Integrated Care Service medical directorate, Trusts, patients and borough-based teams to operationalise the principles in the document. Wide-ranging challenges in prescribing, specialist advice, clinical and non-clinical communication have been investigated and, resources, guidance and templates have been co-developed for south east London services and shared on a dedicated webpage. Promotional materials and a training programme for NHS providers have been built to ensure these principles are spread widely, embedded at each layer of organisations, and that they remain in place once the programme concludes.
Subsequent engagement with providers in community and mental health settings has expanded the applicability of the consensus document. A set of expectation statements has been designed, informed through user research and co-refined with patients with lived experience of interface challenges, to provide a patient perspective ‘mirror’ to the consensus document.
Involving people within our projects
Over 150 people with lived experience worked with us across 24 projects and six Health Innovation Network South London teams in 25/26 including engagement with children and young people in two programmes.
People contributed in a wide variety of ways, from co-design workshops to focus groups and reference groups – ensuring appropriate, diverse and meaningful involvement throughout our work.
We also enhanced our strategic capacity by revising our existing Lived Experience Partner model, appointing two new partners who each work one day per week. This has increased the breadth and continuity of lived experience input at a strategic level and strengthened support for teams to integrate involvement from the earliest stages of project design.
A significant milestone has been the development of our refreshed Involvement Strategy for 2026–31, scheduled for launch in early 2026/27, which reiterates our commitment to involvement and sets a more ambitious and consistent framework for embedding meaningful involvement in all programmes.
A core theme emerging through this work is creativity – trialling new, more flexible and engaging approaches that are already influencing our approach to involvement.
Our Partners with People quarterly newsletter remains a key channel for communication and engagement. The mailing list now includes 255 subscribers, 196 of whom are patients or members of the public.
Our dedicated Involvement Team continues to provide structured, responsive support to colleagues and system partners, offering both internal guidance and an external offer that shares our expertise more widely.
Dementia Health Tech Horizon Scan
The Health Innovation Network South London delivered three Dementia Health Tech Horizon Scans as part of a collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the NIHR HealthTech Research Centres. The scans covered innovations in better diagnosis, better care, and new treatment. Together they provide one of the most up to date pictures of how technology is shaping the future of dementia pathways.
The better diagnosis scan highlighted the key role of digital technologies as the scan showed that 60% of all diagnostic innovations identified indicate the use of AI. The better care and new treatment scans complemented this picture by mapping technologies that enhance quality of life, support carers, and advance prevention and therapeutic development.
Since launch, the scans have generated nearly 50 requests from a diverse range of national and international organisations, including leaders in national policy and regulation such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and the Department of Health and Social Care; global industry organisations including Novo Nordisk and Oracle; frontline NHS organisations and regional networks; innovative SMEs; and internationally recognised academic institutions ranging from King’s College London to the University of Auckland.
The findings have also been shared at major national events, including ConfedExpo 2025 and the Westminster Health Forum, helping to position the HIN as a leading voice in dementia innovation and horizon scanning. The Health Innovation Network South London also contributed national thought leadership in an innovation in early dementia diagnosis article.
Find out more on the three Dementia Health Tech Horizon Scans:
Obesity Pathway Innovation Programme
South London faces a critical public health challenge where over half of adults live with excess weight – 57% in south west London and 56% in south east London.
Childhood obesity is also a significant concern, affecting approximately 23% of children at reception age in south east London and rising to 38% by Year 6, exceeding the national average of 36%. South west London also faces substantial challenges, with rates increasing from approximately 20% at reception age to 32% by Year 6. These trends are driving demand, yet capacity in both primary care and Specialist Weight Management Services remains severely constrained.
In Summer 2025 the Health Innovation Network South London led two Innovate UK weight management pathway design accelerator projects to rethink and explore opportunities for redesigning adult weight management pathways across south London. These brought together stakeholders, including healthcare professionals and innovators in weight management, and tested and refined new approaches. The projects also explored the potential role and acceptability of greater community pharmacy involvement in delivering weight management support, including support relating to weight management medications.
This work led to collaboration between both south London Integrated Care Boards on two bids submitted in November 2025 to the national Innovate UK Obesity Pathway Innovation Programme. These bids set out an ambitious three-year plan to transform outcomes and deliver a more effective, equitable and digitally enabled weight management services for residents including a single point of access for weight management (£2.4 million), and a focus on delivering healthy weight support through community pharmacy, neighbourhood whole family approach models, and digital innovation (£4.8 million). Both bids scored over 80%, and were shortlisted for interview in late January, with the HIN team developing supporting materials and participating in the interview process.