Our purpose is to transform lives through the adoption and spread of innovation in health and care, and to generate economic growth as part of the national AHSN Network.  

To achieve this, we help build capability vital to the adoption and spread of innovation. We support partners to evaluate impact and apply learning and share this knowledge across our health and care, industry, academic and voluntary sectors networks and collaborations.

Health Equity focus

Our future work will focus on identifying and spreading innovative practice that helps close gaps in health equity.

In March 2021 we agreed our five-year strategic plan to bring greater focus to our work, and increase our impact by maximising improvements to health equity through innovative practice.

The overarching theme of health equity informs our approach to national programmes and defines the focus of our regional programmes - read more about our health equity programmes Perinatal and Mental Health Services for Young People.

Day to day, we collaborate with members and partners, as follows:

Spreading innovation

We spread proven innovative practice across our region’s health and care system by building networks, sharing knowledge, strengthening collaboration and providing practical support to our partners.

Developed over many years working regionally and nationally, our expertise in how to spread innovative practice is a considerable asset to the health and care sector in the South West. We have developed our popular Spread Academy to help teams put their ideas into action and supported innovators to take their next steps.

Building capability

We help build the culture and capabilities vital to the identification, development, adoption and spread of innovative practice across the regional health and care system.

Creating the opportunity for innovation, and the conditions for continuous improvement makes the most of our work with both frontline staff and strategic leaders regionally and nationally.

Our experience in large-scale change, scaling up new ideas, quality improvement and co-production with patients helps support people across the health and care system, from front-line staff to systems leaders and life sciences businesses.

Evaluation and learning

We support our local systems to evaluate the impact and apply learning to improve the delivery of health and care services. To achieve this, we provide rapid, actionable insights to inform improvements and spread innovative practice.

Our expertise in measuring change and sharing learning is vital in bringing people together and demonstrating our ability to translate innovation into positive ongoing impact for our health and care system.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our rapid learning cycles provided responsive feedback in a fast-changing environment, and signalled ways we can positively influence future health and care.

The South West Academic Health Science Network (South West AHSN) is one of 15 AHSNs set up by NHS England across the country in 2013. You can read more about the AHSN Network here and you can find out more about who we are here.