• Aston University’s NHS partnership will develop England's first system for monitoring an integrated community health system
• Many NHS services are being redesigned so they can be delivered by neighbourhood teams
• The collaboration will help Birmingham and Solihull better identify and tackle health inequalities, making services fairer and more accessible for everyone.

Aston University is partnering with the Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC) to build better joined-up health and care services in local neighbourhoods across Birmingham and Solihull.

This more joined up approach aligns with the government's 10-year health plan to create a Neighbourhood Health Service by moving care out of large hospitals and closer to people's doorsteps, shifting focus away towards preventing illness and moving from analogue systems to more efficient digital technology.

The three-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project will develop England’s first comprehensive system for monitoring how these changes impact patients and staff. It will provide critical metrics on people’s health, their experiences of care, and the well-being of NHS staff, so that continuous improvement can be guided by a detailed understanding of what works well.

To guide this transformational piece of work, health and organisational management researchers across Aston University will work with BCHC to develop a monitoring system to measure outcomes as each service and clinic is redesigned. This will combine qualitative methods, systems mapping and big data.

The system will measure patient experiences of care and help determine whether clinical outcomes are being achieved as services improve - such as reducing the likelihood of falls, preventing acute and critical illness, or better managing chronic conditions. It will also map the efficiency and flow of patients between hospital, community and home so that staff can rapidly intervene in the event of bottlenecks or delays.

For staff, the system will measure wellbeing, caseload and travel burdens as they move into community hubs across the city. These insights will enable the Birmingham and Solihull health and care services to operate an integrated community care system that is more sustainable for staff and can be continuously improved.

As other UK towns and cities look to redesign their health and care services in response to the UK government's 10-year plan for the NHS, the Birmingham and Solihull model could offer a blueprint for others to learn from.

The KTP project will be led by researchers in Aston University’s Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment, Aston Business School and Aston Pharmacy School. They will bring expertise in developing and deploying data-driven methods for evaluating health services and community care projects, tried and tested through existing partnerships with the NHS.

Professor Rachel Shaw, associate director for researcher development (academic) at the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment at Aston University, leads the KTP. She said:

“Every NHS system is unique to the community it serves. We’re building an evidence-based way to monitor and guide the redesign of a health system that will be fit for the future and reusable for other organisations. Effective evaluation will support staff tasked with running NHS services across Birmingham and Solihull and empower them to continuously improve those services based on evidence. We want to see how staff as well as patients can benefit from care in the community, so that this programme can be a guiding light for other NHS systems across England.”

Dr Robbie Dedi, chief medical officer for BCHC, said:

“Making it easier for citizens to access the care and support they need, when and where they need it, is the driving force behind the city’s transformation of health and care services. Our partnership with Aston University will be critical for enabling us to better identify and tackle health inequalities, so we can make services fairer and more accessible for everyone. The new monitoring systems we’re setting up together will guide us in what works, what needs to be improved and whether we’re managing our resources effectively. This will be the first major evaluation of how integrated care functions across Birmingham and Solihull.”

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, funded by Innovate UK, are collaborative projects that bring together a business, an academic partner, and a qualified associate to deliver strategic innovation and business improvement. Aston University is a national leader in the programme, ranked joint-first in the UK for volume of active projects and first for overall project quality.

For further details about Aston University’s KTPs, visit https://www.aston.ac.uk/business/collaborate-with-us/knowledge-transfer-partnership/at-work