Transforming lives through innovation
2024 -26 Business Plan
Who we are
Executive summary
Our vision is to drive a healthier and more equitable society across Kent and Medway, Surrey and Sussex.
We are working towards a future where innovation spreads rapidly, where people are connected to transformative ideas, and where patients have access to the health and social care they need. Our focus is on addressing health inequalities and supporting underserved communities to thrive. Our 2024-26 business plan provides a roadmap for achieving this vision. Over the next two years, we will connect stakeholders, communities, and industries to drive change around the most pressing issues in health and care delivery. We will champion innovation through sharing best-practice and highlighting inspirational ideas, from harnessing digital, data and AI to pioneering new approaches in mental health. Our three strategic priorities reflect these goals and are supported by five cross-cutting themes that run through all our work. These include inclusion and equity, workforce transformation, patient safety, co-design: patient and public involvement, and environmental sustainability.
While our region faces ongoing challenges from the growing waiting lists, cost of living crisis, and NHS sustainability, we view these as catalysts for finding smarter, more effective ways to care for our 4.7 million residents. We remain optimistic, given our region’s worldleading research institutions, talented NHS workforce, and bustling life sciences hub.
The new Government plans to transform our national health and care system into a neighbourhood health service and this aligns well with our objectives. We look forward to continuing our close collaboration with ICS colleagues and local partners, addressing regional needs while supporting national priorities. By facilitating translational research and supporting innovators, we will accelerate the journey from ideas to real-world impact. Our commitment to building a diverse, agile workforce means we will remain responsive to evolving challenges and opportunities.
We will continue to deliver our established portfolios in cardiovascular disease, mental health, medicines optimisation, and digital, data and AI, while nurturing emerging focus areas in women’s health, population health, and healthy ageing. Patient safety remains a key focus, guided by our Patient Safety Collaborative.
This business plan sets our course for healthier lives, a stronger economy, and a healthier, safer future in Kent and Medway, Surrey and Sussex. Together, we will drive action and reimagine health and care for our region.
Jane Ollis Chair
Dr Hatim Abdulhussein CEO
Transforming lives through innovation
Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) is one of the 15 health innovation networks across England, established by NHS England in 2013
We are the health innovation adoption experts.
We transform lives through innovation by supporting health and social care teams to find, test and implement new solutions to the NHS’ greatest challenges, driving economic growth.
We tackle national problems, with local understanding. And local problems, with national expertise.
This drives economic prosperity and growth in all parts of the country, and ensure that everyone benefits from innovation
Health Innovation KSS covers the whole of Kent and Medway, Surrey and Sussex. Our impact comes from our ability to bring people, resources and organisations together, delivering benefits that could not be achieved alone.
The Health Innovation Network national impact since 2018
3.2m patients have benefited from our national adoption and spread programmes
£2.6b of investment leveraged for UK plc
9,000 innovations/companies have been supported locally, regionally & nationally
340,000 hours of health and care staff capacity released through our national workforce programme
10,000 jobs have been created and/or secured across England Working with
11,827 care homes to support the safer care of residents
286k+ people supported at home with technology-enabled remote monitoring through the national Innovation Collaborative
9,000+ heart attacks and strokes prevented due to improvement in lipid management achieved across England
Our refreshed strategy and priorities for 2024-26
Our work broadly focuses on national commissions, support for local systems and innovators, and specialised strategic partnerships and new business opportunities, commissioned from individual stakeholders in areas that align with our priorities and capabilities.
National commissions Local commissions
50%
These are our core services available to all stakeholders at no cost as part of nationally commissioned services. For example, our Patient Safety Collaborative and MedTech Funding Mandate.
50%
This support focuses on the specific services available to ICSs and wider parters at no extra cost, where requirement aligns with local priority or unmet need, dependent on resource availability. For example, Children and Young People’s Mental Health.
Strategic partnerships
This work focuses on strategic partnerships with national and local stakeholders for ‘paid for’ services that sit outside of nationally commissioned services. These projects and partnerships focus on our cross-cutting themes and priorities.
Our commissions
As a Network, we receive three core commissions.
Our core objectives from NHS England are to:
• Generate a rich pipeline of demonstrably useful evidence-based innovations
• Support adoption & spread of proven evidence-based innovations across England
Our core functions from OLS are act as innovation exchanges to:
• Identifying need and communicating regional priorities
• Signposting and supporting innovators
• Validation in real-world settings
• Adoption and spread of innovations
We act as the delivery arm for the National Patient Safety Collaboratives on:
• Managing Deterioration
• Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism Safety
• Medicines Safety
• System Safety
• Maternity and Neonatal Safety
As a local health innovation network, we also receive commissions with local health services and industry partners.
Our context and strategic plan 24-26
Ecosystem context
The contextual backdrop for 2024 onwards is challenging and uncertain.
We plan to continue to deliver our core priorities, while also actively building new relationships to strengthen our organisation.
We will continue to review and respond to the external environment as part of our ongoing strategic planning process.
Context Response
Reduced core budgets and commissions
Explore new partnerships and opportunities to complement our existing commissions. Review spending and become the right size to deliver an exceptional service.
Increased focus on local ICSs and their needs as they mature
Prioritise our relationships with ICSs, understanding their needs and building dedicated virtual teams.
The Innovation Ecosystem Review Programme
Continue to deliver and demonstrate value against our core commissions and join-up with other health innovation networks to maximise impact.
New Government and new priorities
Longer-term business planning (3-5 years) that demonstrates how our work supports the priorities of the new Government.
Ongoing workforce dissatisfaction in the NHS
Recognise workforce pressures and demonstrate how our programmes and innovations can improve productivity and workforce wellbeing.
Health system challenges in our region
Serving the 4.7million people who live in our region is core to our mission.
However, like many regions, our area faces financial, operational and clinical pressures. The shape of our population is changing, with more people than ever before needing access to the right health and care at the right time. This section details some of the macro pressures that our region faces, with a view to providing context for our regional priorities set out in this business plan.
We have high levels of health inequalities with deprived areas facing a lower life expectancy. People living in deprived areas have worse health and outcomes compared to their affluent counterparts. Our region is home to some of the most socially deprived areas in England. Life expectancy in these areas is lower than in the rest of the region. We must look after the most vulnerable and tackle health inequalities.
External factors are negatively impacting our region’s health. COVID-19 and the current cost of living crisis have impacted everyone in our region. For example, alcohol consumption, mental health disorders and obesity have increased in adults as a result.
Our population is growing and ageing. More people are moving to live in our area. We have an ageing population who are living longer. As a result, more people are living with conditions like dementia and loneliness.
We face challenges recruiting, retaining and developing the workforce. Like many other regions, health and care professionals in our area are under strain. As a result, our ICBs have faced challenges to recruit and retain the workforce they need to meet demand.
Children and young people (CYP) need support for the best start in life. In recent times, more CYP require help and care, and the issues they have are more complicated and severe than before. More focus is needed on CYP and their families to support them in all aspects of life. More focus on prevention and addressing social determinants of health. Many of our health and care services are focused on treating and supporting people when they become ill. We need to shift some of these resources to focus on preventing people to become ill in the first place. We will help people to look after their own health and wellbeing.
Using digital, data and AI. Digital, data and AI can offer an opportunity to deliver health and care in innovative ways that can enable our communities to live healthier lives at home. We must now capitalise on the value of digital and data solutions in our regions throughout our health and care systems.
Our strategic plan for 2024-26
Our purpose
Transforming lives through innovation.
Our vision
To drive a healthier and more equitable society by rapidly spreading innovation and connecting people to transformative ideas.
Our strategic priorities for 2024-26
1
Establish Health Innovation KSS as the ‘go to partner’ to address health and care system challenges through adoption of innovation.
2
Build partnerships with wider stakeholders to drive innovation to address national and regional priorities.
3
Deliver on our national and local commissions through effective and efficient programme management
Understanding strategic priority 1
Establish Health Innovation KSS as the ‘go to partner’ to address health and care system challenges through adoption of innovation.
We have a deep knowledge of the challenges facing the health and care system and a proven approach of spreading innovative solutions and transformative pathways to patients and populations.
This strategic priority focuses on supporting our system partners to recognise Health Innovation KSS as a valued partner in innovation. In practice, this means helping our local partners to understand how we can help them with specific innovation and transformation challenges and building their confidence in our mechanisms to address these issues.
We must demonstrate our leadership and have an authoritative voice on how our region can successfully adopt health and care innovations. We will continue to share best practice, learnings and raise awareness of how our work and the work of our partners is leading to wider adoption of innovation. Our people are our greatest asset, and under this priority, we will also continue to invest in our people and support them to be the best they can be.
Examples of our work that support priority 1:
• Women’s Health Strategy
• Our support for the Sussex Integrated Dataset
• Our support for the secure data environment
We will:
✓ Provide innovation leadership in our region, with particular focus on our cross-cutting themes.
✓ Act as a representative for our region in the national health and care innovation landscape.
✓ Share best-practice within our region and nationally to foster a learning environment that leads to innovations reaching as many people as possible.
✓ Demonstrate the impact of our programmes by sharing evidence and outcomes with key stakeholders.
✓ Continue to upskill and build the capability of our teams and supporting them to deliver their best work.
Understanding strategic priority 2
Build partnerships with wider stakeholders to drive innovation to address national and regional priorities.
We partner with a diverse range of stakeholders, including health and care professionals, academia and researchers, innovators and industry, patients and caregivers.
This strategic priority focuses on a) strengthening existing relationships, especially with local stakeholders b) forging new relationships with stakeholders in other sectors, e.g. technology and life sciences and c) convening different stakeholder groups around common interests, e.g. our primary care innovation panel.
Through strong relationships, we can connect unmet needs with innovative solutions, and simultaneously, ensure innovative ideas in development are co-designed with professionals and patients.
We will provide a platform for different stakeholders to engage, interact and share best-practice, so that innovation spreads at pace across our region. to invest in our people and support them to be the best they can be.
Our approach is to blend our national and local commissions alongside bespoke commissions that are specific to the needs of our region. With bespoke projects, there is also an opportunity to bring in wider skills and minds, from parallel sectors.
Examples of our work that support priority 2:
• Pfizer e-labelling project
• Our developing role in the Surrey Academic Health and Care Science Partnership
• Our involvement in the Brighton and Sussex Health Partnership (HRP)
• Our innovation relationship with Kent and Medway Medical School (KMMS)
• Our joint work with the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs)
We will:
✓ Continue to work with national and local stakeholders, to understand their priorities, collaborate on shared goals and share best practice.
✓ Garner new relationships with organisations that share our strategic goals, interests and capabilities.
✓ Regularly bring together diverse stakeholder groups around common themes or issues, to discuss unmet needs and to co-create solutions.
✓ Be an active part of the health innovation network and our wider delivery network (e.g. with the NIHR ARC), working with our innovation counterparts in other parts of the country as appropriate.
Understanding strategic priority 3
Deliver on our national and local commissions through effective and efficient programme management.
For over 10 years, we have successfully delivered our national and local commissions to improve our region’s health, to keep patients safe and to drive economic growth.
As an organisation, we are incredibly proud of the impact and the outcomes of our programmes. A core focus for our business is to continue to deliver high quality and impactful national and regional programmes that accelerate access to well-evidenced innovations for patients. However, we must adapt, evolve and strengthen our approach to help our stakeholders to succeed, especially in a challenging external environment and with national commissions becoming more ICS focused.
We will also structure our business to deliver our work in an agile and efficient way, delivering maximum value for our partners.
Examples of our work that support priority 3:
• The Innovation Exchange. In 2023-24, we supported 393 innovators and contributed £46.5M in economic growth to UK Plc.
• Supporting all three KSS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to secured InHIP funding to focus on lipid optimisation in targeted populations
• Supporting AposHealth to join the MedTech Funding Mandate for national adoption for 2024/25.
We will:
✓ Continue to deliver our national commissions from NHS England, the Office for Life Sciences and Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC)
✓ Continue to partner and deliver for the ICBs we serve including Kent and Medway, Sussex Health and Care, and Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership
✓ Respond to national and regional oversight and guidance.
✓ Apply our existing knowledge and experience to the evolving external landscape.
✓ Review and redesign our organisational operational model to optimise operational processes and implement strategy into operational delivery.
✓ Continue to invest in our people and complete our cultural transformation project.
Our approach
Our operating model
This is our structured approach to enabling the widespread adoption of proven, safe innovation and sharing of best practice locally, nationally and globally.
Our skills and capabilities
Our talented team use a broad range of skills and capabilities as part of our operating model.
Through these areas of expertise, we can work flexibly with partners across the health and care system.
Social listening
Actively listening to people and local populations
Health Inequalities
Addressing unmet needs in the community through innovation collaboratives
Spreading
Translating innovative solutions into practice and accelerating the use of digital tech and Al
Innovator Support
Articulating needs to industry and providing support to innovators
Clinical Engagement
Creating clinical and professional networks to improve safety culture and promote innovation
Insights
Enabling data analysis and evaluation activities
‘Join the dots’
Creating and sustaining intersector partnerships in health and social care
Research & Innovation
Shaping strong and successful research partnerships
Economic Growth
Contributing to local growth and supporting a vibrant labour market
Our established and emerging portfolios
Our focus areas have been developed based upon national policy and regional alignment of needs, matched to our internal strengths and experience.
We deliver these portfolios across primary, secondary, tertiary and community care settings, with a view that innovations will eventually support people to access care closer to home.
Established growth portfolios
Our overall portfolio includes our full range of national programmes (OLS, Patient Safety, AAC) but the areas below are where we see our work growing due to our expertise and strong track record.
Emerging growth portfolios
These are new focus areas where our partners have expressed an increased interest. We will be establishing these programmes of work throughout our two-year business plan. Cardiovascular disease
Identifying and addressing local priorities
We partner with our regional health and care leaders to identify priority areas for innovation and align our activity to address these.
We are codesigning delivery plans to support local needs of three Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)
Our delivery teams support the system to meet the quintuple aim for healthcare and delivery
Improving outcomes in population health and healthcare
Tackling inequalities in outcomes, experience and access
Enhancing productivity and value for money
Helping the NHS support broader social and economic development
Making the NHS the best place to work
During programme design, we continue to reflect the cross-cutting themes of workforce transformation, patient safety, environmental sustainability, patient and public involvement and health equity.
Our cross-cutting themes
Several underpinning themes are seen throughout our work programmes and priorities.
Health Innovation KSS is committed to developing and supporting best practice approaches in these areas.
Inclusion and equity Workforce transformation Patient safety Co-design: patient & public involvement Environmental sustainability
Our delivery plan on a page
(ARC)
How we work
Our values
Acting as one with our partners at the Health Innovation Network adopting its values and contributing to its authoritative voice on innovation with the NHS and the Government.
Local
partnersnational impact
We respond to the needs of our local system and act as one to maximise impact.
We embrace equality, diversity and Inclusion
We embrace equality, diversity, and inclusion in all our commissioned work and will reflect this in the development of the Network.
We promote constructive challenge
We model the behaviours required to successfully deploy innovation at scale.
We are committed and accountable
We are committed to deliver the Network Strategy and Business Plan, paying attention to results and strive to constantly improve and are committed.
Investing in our people and systems
Building workforce capability and confidence both internally and externally to drive equitable and ethical innovation.
Our team is made up of nearly 50 clinical and non-clinical experts from across multiple sectors. We have extensive knowledge and experience in Health and Social Care, Academia, Life Science and Research.
In 2024/25 we are planning on supporting our organisational development and our people through investing in:
• Changes to pension and top up scheme
• Investment in training
• Collaborative working, visible and accountable leadership
• Cultural transformation will take place to realign the organisation’s culture to its vision, mission and core values, and to achieve our strategic objectives and those of our partners, including a key focus within this on embracing equality, diversity and inclusion.
• Organisational development review
• Valuing our diverse workforce and their varied and deep expertise, skills and knowledge, we are aligning our capabilities to our strategic objectives and those of our commissioners and strategic partners.
Alongside investing in our people, we will be investing in our systems, tools and processes over 2024-26. This will include:
• Review and redesign of the organisational operational model to optimise operational processes and implement strategy into operational delivery.
• Increase investment in systems, tools and business intelligence.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
As an employer and a contributor to the health and care landscape, we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.
We recognise EDI as a crucial part of helping our employees to feel valued, respected and able to be themselves at work.
We are currently undertaking a cultural change programme, which focuses on strengthening our organisation’s EDI approach and enabling us all to understand how we can be more diverse and inclusive as an organisation. Cultural change involves real shifts in attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, and values within organisations, and it plays a pivotal role in shaping our collective future.
We have begun implementing stage one, which so far has included, diversity surveys, listening into action sessions, and objective setting to help us to understand our purpose and the desired results.
At the end of this phase (due to complete in Sept/Oct 24), we will have set the foundation for the long-term Cultural Change Strategy. This is only the beginning of our EDI journey.
Structure and governance
Health Innovation Kent Surrey Sussex is a social enterprise and company limited by guarantee.
The way we manage our projects and organisation is informed by our goals: to spread well evidenced innovation into practice, manage the health and social care innovation pipeline, and build the region’s innovation and research system.
We are led by a Board made up of a Chair, non-executive, and executive directors. Hatim Abdulhussein is our Chief Executive Officer, and he is supported by our executive management group (EMG), who continue to oversee delivery activity, reporting to the Board. Recently, we have reconfigured our EMG structure so that the roles align more closely with our partners in the health and care system. Day to day delivery of our portfolios and programmes is led by our Senior Leadership Team (SLT). We also have in house enabling functions which include finance, HR and communications.
Our board:
Jane Ollis Chair
Zoe Nicholson Non Executive Director
Nigel Lee Chief Financial Officer
Dr Hatim Abdulhussein
CEO
Kate Lancaster Non Executive Director
Dr
MaryAnn Ferreux Chief Medical Officer
Lisa James Chief Operating Officer
Fiona Craig Chief of Staff and Enterprise
Roshani Perera Non Executive Director
www.healthinnovation-kss.com
enquiries@healthinnovation-kss.com
@HealthInnov_KSS
Amelia House, Crescent Road, Worthing BN11 1RL