Regional success sees south London brand go national

We are thrilled to announce that as part of our new five year licence with NHS England and the Office of Life Sciences, that the AHSN Network has been renamed as the Health Innovation Network.

Our national partners were so pleased with the level of impact we have delivered in south London and beyond in health and care, that when they were relicensing all 15 AHSNs they asked that our name be used for the national co-ordinating office, previously known as the AHSN Network.

And it’s not hard to see why – when we asked teams across the health and care sector that we work with for their views on us we received some fantastic feedback, including a net promoter score of 50 (which is considered “Excellent”) and comments such as:

• “The HIN really helped to accelerate our project becoming nationwide, which was excellent and opened doors we didn't even know were there to knock on.”
• “The HIN meant we got extra funding, doors to different political spaces, and support to navigate the NHS systems locally not only within the local teams, but also the wider NHS systems those local services sit within. This was invaluable.”

At a local level we have secured £1m of additional funding for the south London local health and care system so far this year. Across London we completed evaluations on Pan London Remote monitoring and led approaches to London-wide system learning including webinars on Cardiovascular Disease, Autism, Novel therapies, MSK and Anti-racism.

Nationally our FemTech accelerator is helping 12 early stage entrepreneurs improve conditions which disproportionately impact on women and the FREED programme, which helps young people with eating disorders get early treatment has been shortlisted for a national award. Plus this quarter we have begun working with NHS Fife in Scotland on addiction, and with colleagues in North Ireland to provide leadership support. Internationally we have joined the TeleRehaB project which is looking at how AI and augmented reality can help people with balance problems after strokes.

Dr Rishi Das-Gupta, Chief Executive of the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London said: “Our ethos has always been on collaboration with a focus on the spread and adoption of innovation which benefits patients and NHS staff. We’re so committed that we’ve now successfully spread our name to the national team!”

The other networks have already started changing their names to be known as the health innovation network for their area, e.g. Health Innovation East Midlands and all 15 will continue to work together as part of the national Network.