Impact report 2024-25

Welcome to our impact report for 2024-25

Download the full publication here as a PDF or browse the online contents below.

We are pleased to introduce our impact report for 2024-25, showcasing the difference we’ve made to the lives of people across the West of England. This past year, our collective efforts have positively impacted over 14,300 people and supported more than 16,000 health and care colleagues across the West of England.

We’ve also played a significant role in driving economic growth nationally, leveraging over £490 million and helping to create or safeguard more than 912 jobs through the national Health Innovation Network.

These numbers reflect our commitment to accelerating the government’s strategic shifts for the NHS: embracing digital transformation, delivering more care in the community, and moving from treatment to prevention.

You’ll read how our digital health work, like rollout of the HOME remote blood pressure monitoring service and the Living Well with COPD pilot, are empowering more people to stay well at home. Our pioneering PERIPrem care bundle continues to make a profound difference, having cared for over 3,400 premature babies in the South West to date and contributing to the region achieving the country’s lowest mortality rate for babies born at less than 32 weeks.

Our work to encourage a reduction in the prescribing of high-risk opioids has saved around 17 lives in the West of England, while the risk of opioid-related deaths has been halved for around 487 people.

Crucially, we are committed to tackling health inequalities. Our Black Maternity Matters collaborative, now with 331 members, directly confronts maternal health disparities through anti-racist training and support for perinatal staff. Our national Polypharmacy Programme has engaged nearly 6,000 healthcare professionals across England, reducing medication-related harm and encouraging better patient conversations, particularly in seldom-heard communities.

Our success is rooted in collaboration with NHS provider organisations, integrated care systems, universities, industry, patients and communities. We also support our health and care workforce to foster an innovation mindset through our West of England Academy and initiatives like the Innovate Healthier Together Fellowship, benefiting 495 participants and 130 Fellows this year.

We are incredibly grateful to all our partners, collaborators and dedicated teams whose passion and expertise made these achievements possible. We look forward to continuing this vital work, ensuring all communities in the West of England benefit faster from proven innovations in health and care.

As a Health Innovation Network, one of our driving principles is that wealth is as important as health. We aim to support the creation of a forward-thinking commercial environment in the West of England.

We believe that as part of a vibrant health and life sciences sector, the NHS can collaborate effectively with industry for patient benefit, while delivering greater value for the taxpayer, contributing towards the nation’s prosperity and stimulating economic growth.

As a Health Innovation Network, it is vital that our activities align with the priorities of our health and care partners and that we can flex and pivot our support to evolving needs.

We proved this agility during the Covid pandemic. And again, this year we have shown we are well positioned to work with the NHS and innovators to realise the government’s strategic shifts that will be needed to create a truly modern health service designed to meet the changing needs of our population.

These three shifts are:

1. embracing digital transformation
2. delivering more care in the community and people’s homes
3. moving from treatment to prevention.

One of the key ambitions set out in our five-year strategy is to make a measurable contribution to reducing health inequalities and inequity.

We will achieve this by ensuring we consider this across our entire portfolio of work, specifically as we seek to reduce unwarranted variation in care outcomes as we spread innovation.

We are also keen to develop more focused projects that aim to redress the balance and proactively help to undo past damage done resulting from ignoring the needs and voices of so many who have been marginalised in our local communities.

The safety of patients and improving quality of care is a critical thread running throughout all our work.

We want to build on the success to date of our local Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) and continue to support the ambitions of the national NHS Patient Safety Improvement Programme.

Our goal is to ensure that patients in the West of England can be confident that care is safe for patients based on a culture of openness, collaboration, continuous learning and quality improvement.

Health and social care systems in the West of England need innovative solutions to help them cope with demand and improve services for local people. We also recognise the importance innovation can play in delivering efficiencies and supporting productivity.

We also play a vital role in fostering a culture of learning, collaboration, and knowledge sharing around innovation and transformation. We support health and care professionals to think and work innovatively and implement new ways of working.