Enabling innovation in healthcare
Working in partnership with our NHS colleagues, we are committed to driving forward new and innovative ideas that transform the experience of care for patients at the Trust’s hospitals. By enabling NHS staff to think openly, develop new ways of working and implement change, we are helping to keep our hospitals at the cutting edge of healthcare. Over the last year we have provided funding to support a wide range of innovative projects across the Trust’s hospitals as well as working together with a number of new partners to provide better health and wellbeing for people living in our local communities. To help us achieve this objective, we said we would: • establish ourselves as a leading partner at the cutting edge of healthcare • fund major transformation projects within and beyond the Trust • build partnerships with key health and third sector organisations to expand the impact our work can have. In 2020/21, we: • awarded two rounds of funding totalling £1.3m as part of our new grants programme, Innovate at Imperial • worked in partnership with Imperial College Healthcare to develop and launch a new funding programme, Compassionate Communities, extending vital support to community-led health and wellbeing initiatives • awarded a £1m grant to support the development of a ‘hybrid’ operating theatre at St Mary’s Hospital • 38
partnered with two other NHS charities to fund pioneering research into a rare children’s inflammatory condition caused by Covid-19. OUR IMPACT
Our progress towards achieving this objective During the year we supported a number of innovative projects to improve the quality of care provided for patients in our hospitals, including the creation of a new 'hybrid' operating theatre at St Mary's Hospital. The launch of a new funding programme, Innovate at Imperial, also opened up new opportunities for staff to design and develop improvement projects for their ward, department or service. Establishing our Compassionate Communities initiative demonstrated how we can work effectively in partnership with the Trust to have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of the local population beyond the hospital walls. Having taken important steps forward in this area, we now recognise the need to thoroughly review and evaluate these new programmes over the course of 2021/22 while continuing to build on our working relationships with the Trust to identify a range of other innovative projects for future funding.
