Kent and Medway Innovation Collaborative update

The 5th of February marked an exciting community event which brought together over 110 people from across Kent and Medway to focus on transforming lives through innovation for people suffering with one or more of the following long term conditions: Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Cardiovascular diseases and Diabetes.

The mandate

This was in response to a mandate from Kent and Medway’s Clinical Professional Board to Kent and Medway’s Innovation collaborative to find digital and other solutions to support and empower people living with or caring for people living with these conditions.

What is the Innovation Collaborative?

The Innovation Collaborative is made up of consists of Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN and the Design and Learning Centre. The collaborative has a remit to accelerate the uptake of health and social care innovations in Kent and Medway and seeks to identify, select and support the adoption of innovations that improve clinical outcomes, deliver better patient experiences, drive down the costs of care and stimulate wealth creation locally and regionally.

The journey to date

Following initial engagement at a workshop on February 2019 with staff including subject matter experts, commissioners and other colleagues, we had the opportunity to engage further with members of the public. In particular, those living with or caring for people living with one or more of these conditions.

We held four engagement session across the four ICPs (Integrated Care Partnerships) across Kent and Medway to help us better understand the experiences and needs of people in their respective communities, but also to gather some ideas and suggestions for us to explore in the true spirit of co-design.

These events were very well-received and we will be bringing the outputs of these together to summarise key themes as well as explore potential solutions from industry and third sector to further support the development of Kent and Medway’s approach to population health management to improve overall population outcomes.

The event on 5th February allowed us to bring together all the key themes from our engagement sessions and gave us a further opportunity to explore these by looking at some potential solutions which ranged from digital innovations to third sector and local services. There was good mix of people ranging from members of the public, staff from local authorities, Parish councillors, NHS staff, STP System Leaders amongst many others.