Patient and public engagement, and involvement and gathering insights When our grant funding application was scored, we really benefitted from having a well thought out PPIE strategy which had already informed our innovation and business model. The PPIE workshop was really inspiring and it was great learning from patients in a collaborative setting John Fitzpatrick, CFO, Cardisio We help innovators and organisations to build strong patient insight and involvement into their innovation projects. W e need the people who use health and care services to influence how innovation is developed and implemented to make sure that the system works better for everyone. Capturing insight from patients and people with lived experience can help organisations understand the challenges they face and give a different perspective on the impact of their innovation or service change. We understand the importance of meaningful patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE), and we continue to test and adapt new approaches and share those insights with our partners. As well as supporting the East of England Citizens Senate this year, we have begun recruiting Patient Voice Ambassadors. These Eastern AHSN funded Ambassadors are critical partners who will support Eastern AHSN by providing an authentic patient voice for selected programmes, giving us insight for bid writing and connecting our projects to diverse local community advocacy groups. If you would like to know more about our PPIE work, email our deputy CEO helen.oliver@eahsn.org. Partnering with patients to improve innovators chances of funding success We help innovators develop their technology and support them on their route to market. PPIE is a core component of this work and is an essential and often neglected aspect of good funding applications: its hugely beneficial when you can evidence that your innovation meets the needs of the patient and can improve health outcomes. This year, Eastern AHSN developed and delivered a series of bespoke PPIE workshops, sparking collaboration between innovators and patients to review their technology, validate proposed care pathways and review patient materials. One of these workshops was delivered for Cardisio, whose Cardisiography solution is a screening procedure that helps detect heart health problems in their early stages. We worked with the team to ensure that their patient involvement work programme was effective and comprehensive, which was acknowledged in the feedback for their successful application for a 342,484 grant from SBRI Healthcare. If you want support with building patient voice into your business strategy, contact principle advisor Joanna Dempsey. joanna.dempsey@eahsn.org Award-winning patient involvement Involving patients in decisionmaking about how their data are used for patient or societal benefit has been central to the work of Gut Reaction, the Health Data Research Hub for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Eastern AHSN was a partner in the project, which was recognised at HDR UKs annual awards in December 2022, where the project won the Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement Award. Gathering insight A s well as engaging patients and the public for direct co-production and collaboration, we have also supported a range of partners this year to gather robust, actionable insight to inform their work. Mapping the genomic landscape We supported NHS East Genomics to create, distribute and analyse a survey of healthcare professionals to understand views on genomic services across the East of England and East Midlands while mapping the various networks and programmes across the genomic community. We also supported them to build a secure database to hold the information they had gathered, keep it up to date and use it to inform their work. Informing blood pressure optimisation services To support our local rollout of the AHSN Networks national blood pressure optimisation programme, in September 2022 we conducted an online survey of the public to gain insight into peoples behaviours regarding their own blood pressure, understanding of hypertension and views on the use of remote monitoring. We developed the survey with input from the East of England Citizens Senate and distributed it through our local integrated care systems (ICSs), charities (e.g., Blood Pressure UK, Heart UK and British Heart Foundation), HealthWatch and Eastern AHSNs own channels. We also targeted specific often-underrepresented demographics via Facebook. We received 723 responses, providing valuable insight and enabling us to develop a series of recommendations for our NHS colleagues to support quality improvement and data-led decisions on commissioning and running blood pressure optimisation services. Read more about this work in our blog. Understanding peoples expectations and experience of urgent and emergency care In the summer of 2022, we were commissioned by NHS England to work closely with the public to better understand their experience and uptake of urgent and emergency care services, including how digital technology and innovation can be used to improve their experiences. The programme included a review of existing research into users experience of urgent care by our partners at The Patient Experience Library, social listening analysis and a citizen survey led by social listening innovator PEP Health, as well as focus groups led by Traverse. The resulting report concludes with four recommendations for action that could be taken in the short and medium term to support patients to access the full range of UEC services. Read the full story and access the report on our website. Share this article If you need support gathering actionable insight to inform service transformation, contact helen.oliver@eahsn.org. Return to About Us