Developing the Health Academic Landscape
NHS South West and the Region’s HEIs are developing a series of coherent activities to enable the health challenges of the 21st Century to be best addressed and coherent economic development and societal impact secured.
The major health challenges are chronic disease management and the sustenance of population health across the age spectrum. Full patient and clinical engagement and integration of clinical services are crucial to meeting those challenges. For the contribution of academia to be fully realised, any health:academic alliance must embrace such imperatives.
We propose the creation of a regional Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) to address this agenda, the principal purpose of which will be the co-development of world class health status and economic gain for the population through the effective harnessing of academic excellence.
The bid for AHSC status is fully endorsed by all our member HEIs and as such will enable the AHSC to become integrated with other key components of the academic clinical landscape, namely the Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) and plans for proposed regional Health, Innovation and Education Clusters (HIEC).
The AHSC Bid
The primary academic partners involved in the AHSC are the Universities of Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff, represented by their Medical Schools. Such an academic alliance reflects established synergies and partnerships and secures academic critical mass commensurate with existing AHSC structures. Combining the efforts of Universities in this way enables their differing strengths to be exploited e.g. Peninsula innovation, basic bioscience in Bristol.
The involvement of Cardiff University and Medical School offers additional potential links to NHS Wales. Given the evolving diversity of provision of NHS healthcare in the Devolved Administrations, such linkages will foster shared learning, help drive innovation and provide a broader population base for engagement (total 9 million, 13.4% of the UK population).
Given the SHA’s key strategic role in terms of population health, service integration, health innovation and clinical education commissioning, NHS SW is central to our AHSC concept.
Further Information:
AHSC Application Form and Guidance
Our Phase 1 bid will be posted shortly
A 'Town Meeting' is being held in Taunton on the 13th February 2009 looking at the 'Academic Health Science Centre application and the development of the academic:health landscape in the South West Region'. If you are interested in attending please contact us - places are limited and are on an invitation first basis.