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Strategic outcome 6

Digital will support the acceleration of research and innovation to gradually embrace system leading disruptive and cutting edge solutions

Embed a culture of research and innovation across our organisations, underpinned by expanded collaboration with our key partners.

What do we want to achieve?

Centre of Excellence

  • Collate local and regional examples of excellence that help identify, scale and disseminate innovation
    Partner collaboration
  • Expand collaboration with key partners (ALBs, academic institutions, think-tanks etc.)

Innovation culture

  • Embed a culture of research and innovation across the organisation
  • Explore seed funding opportunities to support and scale up ideas

Through the establishment of the HSC Digital Innovation Hub we will create local and regional centres of excellence that help identify, scale and spread innovation. We will use technology and digital tools to improve our ability to translate research outputs into clinical practice.

We will expand collaboration with our key partners, including arms length bodies (ALBs), academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies and others to improve how we deliver research and innovation and enhance our reputation as an innovative body.

What will the future look like?

For our population:

  • Our population benefit from cutting edge diagnostics and treatments.
  • Innovative technologies and tools enhance patient experiences using digital solutions.
  • HSC partnerships and collaboration with industry enables the delivery of new services that drive better  outcomes.

For our people:

  • There is a culture of innovation at HSC which makes it easier to scale and spread new ideas that surface from the front line.
  • Research and Development partnerships provide access to cutting edge diagnostics and treatments.

Personalisation of care

Intelligent use of data will optimise performance and harness population health insights, whilst ensuring robust data protection standards

How do we get there?

Our strategic outcomes are the specific objectives for our overall strategic vision and as such they will also be delivered as part of a three phased approach in terms of resource focus. However, individual programmes and projects will follow unique timelines.

Our phased approach to achieving this outcome

Implementing

  • We will ensure we have the tools and skills within our organisation to harness this data and create insights for HSC staff to use when supporting our population
  • We will develop pathways for staff to learn and build their analytics capabilities
  • We will focus on data quality and safety, including through our cybersecurity initiatives and programmes

Making best use of

  • We will optimise our systems with a view to collecting and leveraging more data. We will focus then on turning this into actionable insights that help us to improve our care and services
  • We will continue to develop robust standards and processes to capture this new data at a local and regional level
  • We will look to embed skilled data and analytics capabilities into teams at all levels

Innovating

  • We will develop processes to routinely evaluate the data and share across our organisation.
  • We will harness the skills we have built through the first two phases and embrace next generation data & analytics tools
  • We will build agile teams of data professionals, equipped with the tools and capabilities required to use our data in innovative new ways

Continuously improving

While each programme will progress through the three stages above at its own pace, embedding a common approach for identifying improvement opportunities, developing solutions and measuring results will allow consistency in tracking progress against the objectives set out in this digital strategy. Generating robust feedback loops and continuous improvement logs will help to ensure that our care is always improving for the people that we serve.

Page last updated: 27 June 2023