In 2023 NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Health Innovation West of England collaboratively designed an exciting programme to accelerate the adoption and spread of innovation across Healthier Together – the local integrated care system (ICS).

The Innovate Healthier Together Programme was established to support the ICB to take full advantage of innovation in achieving their ambitions to change lives and improve health, wellbeing and care for the populations they serve.

Programme objectives

Innovate Healthier Together had multiple objectives:

  • Developing innovation mindsets and culture.
  • Supporting the identification of innovation opportunities and the adoption of innovation into practice – ‘Innovation Pull’.
  • Identifying innovations with a strong evidence base and establishing the conditions for their adoption – ‘Innovation Push’.
  • Creating an enabling innovation infrastructure.

The outcomes intended:

  • Increased awareness and understanding of innovation across the ICS.
  • Increased capability and confidence in implementing innovation.
  • Effective integration and spread of innovative interventions.

Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship

As part of the programme to support the object to develop innovation mindsets and culture, we launched the Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship in May 2024, a community of innovation pioneers and change-makers from across BNSSG.

The aim of the Fellowship is to provide a space to connect individuals with diverse skills from different parts of the health and social care landscape with common interests, ultimately providing opportunities for collaboration, to spark ideas and develop these into actionable solutions to drive better health outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

The Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship is a community dedicated to reimagining health and care across BNSSG. It serves as the go-to-network for both new and established health and care innovators with a passion for improving health outcomes across the region.

The Fellowship offers a space to connect individuals with diverse skills from different parts of the health and social care landscape with common interests; ultimately providing opportunities for collaboration, to spark ideas and develop these into actionable solutions to drive better health outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

Fellows benefit from access to mentors, regular workshops and seminars to share knowledge, enhance innovation and quality improvement skills, and support networking and connections across the community.

The Fellowship has recently partnered with the Health Foundations Supporting Q Connections programme which supports the development of system level networks that are improved by sharing ideas and best practices – which aligns perfectly with our goals for the Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship. Through this partnership we can continue to strengthen collaboration across the innovation landscape, ensuring a lasting impact on local systems.

“The Fellowship gives us the opportunity to do things differently. We now have the chance to create a community that will support each other, be brave enough to innovate, to test, fail, and learn from that. In the end, it’s about doing things better. This Fellowship is a group of people that can start us off on that great journey.” – Professor Sir Steve West CBE, Chair of Health Innovation West of England

Find out more and sign-up to Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship here

Innovate Healthier Together development programme

In association with colleagues from the West of England Academy, we have developed the Innovate Healthier Together development programme – a three-module accredited course to develop participants’ skills in design-thinking, Quality Improvement and facilitation. This will resource them with the techniques and tools to support innovative and creative thinking. We delivered this training to two cohorts of ICS colleagues in 2024.

Understanding attitudes towards innovation in health and care

Colleagues at NIHR ARC West have completed a bespoke research project to better understand the attitudes and behaviours of ICS leaders towards innovation in health and care. The findings of this research has supported system-wide thinking on the development of an Innovation, Improvement and Transformation Framework which will include a Leadership Compact and Development Programme to help develop thought leadership and practical solutions to lead innovative teams.

The programme also actively supported teams deploying innovations into practice. We were a  key partner in the rapid deployment of the Living Well with COPD project, funded by the Health Tech Adoption and Acceleration Fund HTAAF, contributing to the evaluation and thinking around future models of this proactive care project.

We engaged with locality partnerships and other ICS-wide groups, such as the Integrated Care @ Home Board and other multi-disciplinary teams. We are supporting them with design-thinking techniques to co-produce innovative solutions to some of health and care’s most challenging service provision issues.

Programme evaluation

The Innovate Healthier Together programme will be evaluated in 2024/25, contributing to a practical guide for BNSSG ICS partners on opportunities for accelerating innovation into practice.

Get in touch

If you would like to know more about the Innovate Healthier Together Programme or would like to share insights and learning from something you’re working on or have seen in the system, then please feel free to reach out to the team.

As with all our work programmes, any learning and evidence that we gather while working with an individual system is used to inform opportunities for wider adoption and spread across the West of England and beyond.

Contact: Ellie Wetz, Associate Director, Health Innovation West of England, ellie.wetz@nhs.net