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Research and Innovation Strategy 2023-2028 – Overview

This information is about the University Hospitals Sussex Foundation Trust (UHSussex) Research and Innovation Strategy. UHSussex runs hospitals in Brighton, Chichester, Haywards’s Heath, Shoreham and Worthing.

View the full Research and Innovation Strategy 2023-2028

Summary of the new Research and Innovation Strategy

UHSussex has made research and innovation one of its top priorities. This will help improve the quality of the care it offers and the working lives of the people who work here.

It has written a new plan (strategy) to ensure that in five years, all its patients and staff will have the opportunity to take part in research that is important to them.

The strategy sets out the different actions the Trust will take to achieve this. It matches them to its six “True North” strategic themes:

  1. The patient
  2. Quality
  3. Our people
  4. Sustainability
  5. Systems and partnerships
  6. Research and Innovation

The strategy also sets out how the Trust will be able to show how successful these actions are. Its key features are:

  • inclusive involvement of patients and the public to make sure our Research and Innovation is driven by their needs.
  • involvement of all the staff professions who work at the Trust in Research and Innovation which is aligned to the clinical care they deliver.
  • embedding Research and Innovation in the organisation and in the daily lives of our patients and staff.
  • new Research and Innovation career opportunities for our staff.
  • developing high-quality research and innovation support services and facilities.
  • partnership across Sussex with other NHS organisatons, with our medical school; other academic partners such as universities; charities and commercial partners.
  • distinctive, excellent research and innovation that improves care for our patients, the NHS and beyond.

What is Research and Innovation?

Research in healthcare means when healthcare staff and other people who might be working with them, study and learn about health care to try to make it better. They ask questions; do experiments (often called “trials” or “studies”) and gather information. They use new information and discoveries to make decisions about improvements or changes. This is so we can:

  • diagnose diseases earlier or better
  • provide treatments that will make people’s lives better
  • prevent people from developing conditions
  • improve health and care now and for future generations
  • make sure everyone has a better quality of life.

Health professionals already know a lot but there are still many questions that need answers. Sometimes, research just tells us that what we have now, is the best thing available to us now.

Innovation in healthcare is the introduction of new or better treatments or ways of giving people healthcare.

What is the Research and Innovation Strategy?

The Research and Innovation Strategy is our plan for how we will try to improve research and innovation in our Trust by 2028.

It will help to make sure our patients:

  • know what research is
  • know why research is important
  • find it easy to take part in it

It will make sure we:

  • do research and innovation in the best way
  • do the research that is most important to our local community
  • offer more opportunities for our patients to take part in research
  • help our staff understand why research and innovation are important in the different jobs they do
  • make it as easy as possible for our staff to take part in research
  • help more staff develop their own research and innovation

Together, these things will make our hospitals more research active.

How did we decide what to put into the strategy?

First, we listened to lots of different people and organisations. These included:

  • patients
  • leaders and experts in our hospitals
  • people from other parts of the NHS, such as GPs
  • people from universities and colleges

We then looked at the health and wellbeing needs of our local population. To do this we used our “Patient First” quality improvement programme. This means our patients are the focus of everything we do, and we try to give patients excellent care, every time.

Why is research and innovation important?

We know research and innovation and research active hospitals are good in many ways:

  • Patients get better care. They trust that the care they get is as good as it can be and know more about their conditions and treatment. Care is based on the best evidence available. Hospital staff learn from what they do. They also use what they learn to make things better.
  • Hospital staff can learn more and do different things. Working together with different people helps share knowledge. Doing research gives them the chance to progress in their career. This can make them want to stay working for our hospitals. Having happier and more experienced people working for us is good for everyone.
  • Reducing healthcare costs. This means the NHS can provide more care for the money that it is given each year. For example, research and innovation may show that one thing works just as well as another but is cheaper. Then the NHS can spend more on the things that are most needed.
  • The more people who take part in research, the faster we can improve health and care.
  • It gives patients and the public the power to say what they think about research and innovation. Involving patients and listening to their views into account leads means we do research that matters most to our patients.
  • Doing research with other organisations makes it easier to put research findings into practical use across the NHS. This can improve the health of patients. These links between NHS organisations, universities, charities and businesses let them work better together to improve patient care.

How does the Trust try to make sure that these important things happen?

We involve our patients in research and innovation. We try to make sure that more people in our local communities know about research; understand that it is important and can take part in it. This includes people from groups who have been less likely to take part in research for many different reasons.

We also work closely with other NHS organisations in Sussex and academic partners such as the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and local universities.

What has the Trust done about research and innovation before?

  • Last year nearly 10,000 of our patients took part in research studies
  • We ran 328 research studies across our hospitals
  • Around 175 of our staff were either the leader or one of the main researchers of a research project
  • Our research was been published in scientific journals
  • We led research which is recognised as excellent in this country and around the world
  • Our research findings have improved care for NHS patients.

What aims are in the Research and Innovation Strategy and what improvements do we hope to see by 2028?

All our patients will be offered the opportunity to take part in high quality research and innovation.

We will make sure that by 2028:

  • our patients know why healthcare research is important
  • we are doing more research studies across a wider range of areas of healthcare
  • information about the research studies we run is easily available to our patients. It will be easy to access, read and understand
  • we will ask patients and the public what they think about how we develop and do research and innovation
  • we will design more of our own research to give the most benefit possible for our local population.

Changes by 2028 will be that:

  • we will do more research that makes a difference to people’s health and wellbeing
  • more patients will know about research and innovation
  • more patients will have a positive experience of taking part
  • patients and members of the public will take part more in research trials by helping to design them or run them.

All our staff will be able to take part in high quality research and innovation, which is relevant to them. This will improve the care they provide and help make UHSussex a great place to work.

We will make sure that by 2028:

  • our staff understand that research is important and the many ways it can make things better
  • our staff feel confident to talk with patients about research and help them to take part in it
  • our hospital leaders put things in place that mean that all staff know that we are a research active Trust. These will make it easier for staff to lead or be involved in researchwe make sure that research and innovation roles are planned for in all our departments. They are available for all our staffall staff will be able to develop their career by taking part in research and innovation
  • research and innovation is something that people can do in their jobs whatever their role. This makes more people want to work for us and they will be more likely to want to stay working for us.

Changes by 2028 will be that:

  • more of our staff are research active.
  • Staff can benefit from our research training and from the help that we give them to make teaching and learning about research part of their job
  • more of the research we do is led by UHSussex.

We will grow our research and innovation sustainably by doing it in the simplest most efficient ways we can, using new digital technologies

We will make sure that by 2028:

  • the way that we plan and do research will be simplified and research will be run well. We will deliver research more efficiently than national standards say we must. Staff will have all they need to be able to make research a part of the way in which they care for patients.
  • we are doing more commercial research to provide money for the Trust to use
  • we have clear instructions and guidance that will make it easier for us to do more research and innovation work. This will help us to make money from the research that we do; ideas that we have or things we inventwe will use research and innovation to help the Trust to become more environmentally friendly
  • we will improve the places we do our research making it easier for patients and staff to take part and ensure they are close to clinical care where possible.

Changes by 2028 will be that:

  • our research studies are set up, done and finished efficiently and on time. They will meet all the targets that are set for them
  • we are doing, and successfully completing, more innovation studies. We will get more money from doing them
  • we have new research facilities that will help us to do research for years to come
  • we are doing more research which makes money for the Trust. This might be research which is a step towards helping a company make a new medicine or piece of equipment.

We will work with partners in the NHS and in colleges and universities across Sussex to share resources and research problems which affect the patients who use all our services.

We will make sure that by 2028:

  • we are an important member of the Brighton and Sussex Health Research Partnership. We are helping it to develop and be a success.
  • we are the acute Trust that organisations doing healthcare research in Sussex most want to work with.
  • we make a valuable contribution to all the research and innovation projects that we do with partners from the UK and around the worldwe have strong links with businesses, charities and universities that will help our patients to get new medicines and treatmentswe are making the best of working with partners so that we can do more research and innovation work more efficiently.
  • we will work on research which is a priority for improving the local population’s health. We will do this by working with local NHS and other organisations who together make up something called an Integrated Care System. We will work with them to find out what the local priorities are and what research is needed most.

Changes by 2028 will be that:

  • we are working with partners to do research that is important. This will improve the health of the local population and how healthcare is provided.
  • our researchers are getting help they need to do research from the Joint Clinical Research Office.
  • we are getting more money from the National Institute for Health and Care Research to help us to do more, and better, researchwe are doing more research with other NHS organisations and with universities and colleges.
  • we will be putting in place more things that allow us to do research funded equally by the Trust and a partner organisations (matched funding).

UHSussex will be a place where all our staff understand why research and innovation is important. They see it as part of the way that they can make things better for our patients and for themselves. People and organisations outside of UHSussex will see us as somewhere that does important research of high quality. UHSussex will make improvements based on good evidence from research.

We will make sure that by 2028:

  • we have an organisational culture in which research and innovation are seen as ‘how we do things at UHSussex’. Organisational culture is the way an organisation does things, including how people work together and communicate, and what they value
  • we have grown a unique profile, in this country and abroad, for excellent research and innovation. This will be led by our researchers in areas where we have already proved that our research is excellent. For example, research into heart conditions, cancer, infections and children’s health
  • we do new and excellent research and innovation. It will be led by our own researchers and be built around the needs of our patients and local population. We will match it to the things that other parts of the NHS, and our university partners think are important and to their strengths. It will also help to meet the challenges of the NHS long-term plan.  

Changes by 2028 will be that:

  • all our staff see research and innovation as an important part of the way we work at the Trust
  • we do things in the best way that we can, based on things we have found out from research
  • we will be able to show that the way we do research and innovation work is excellent
  • we will collect evidence to show that our research and innovation makes a real difference. This will be known about in this country and around the world.

What will we do next to improve research and innovation at UHSussex?

  • We will use our Patient First methods to give our teams that work with patients every day the power to solve problems. They will lead in making changes that are needed. These are set out in the teams’ mission statements that say what they will do and how they will do it.
  • We will make detailed high-level plans for the different pieces of work needed to improve our research and innovation. These will tell the teams working on different research projects what they need to do. The plans will also let them know the important things they have to do that will show whether the work has done what it was supposed to.
  • Research and innovation will be included in the plan for how the hospitals are organised and work. Leaders of different divisions (such as Cancer, Surgery and Medicine Divisions) will be responsible for this. They will make sure that research and innovation is considered in how the divisions work. They will lead research and innovation for their divisions.
  • Divisions will have plans to make sure that they do more research and innovation work. They will tell a group called the Divisional Strategy Deployment Review (SDR) what research and innovation work their divisions are doing and how well it is going. Our Research and Innovation Strategic Steering Group will look at the plans and check that they are working for patients and staff.
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