New research centre to improve patient care in Scotland

Published On Mon 7 Apr 2014 by Roddy Isles

The Scottish Improvement Science Collaborating Centre – a Scotland-wide initiative to improve quality of patient care and ensure that world-leading research leads to impact across society – has been awarded funding of £3.25 million.

The award has been made by a partnership involving the Scottish Funding Council, the Chief Scientist Office, The Health Foundation, and NHS Education for Scotland (NES). The Centre will be based at the University of Dundee but it will be a large-scale collaboration involving universities, health boards, local authorities, patients, carers, communities and advocacy groups.

It will be led by the University’s Professor Mary Renfrew and Professor Dilip Nathwani from NHS Tayside.

Welcoming the launch of the Centre, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil said, “I am proud that the NHS in Scotland has a worldwide reputation for patient safety and delivering quality care. I believe that this partnership will build on this by allowing our NHS to take best practice and learning from across the world and apply it to our healthcare services to continue to drive up the quality of patient experience and outcomes, and improve the health of the public.”

Professor Mary Renfrew, said, “This Centre will address one of the major questions which has always surrounded public health and healthcare, namely how do we develop great research, whether done here in Scotland or internationally, into sustainable and consistent practice that can have a real impact on people’s lives? Our ultimate goal across the health services must always be to improve health and wellbeing in society.”

Professor Nathwani at NHS Tayside added, “This is a unique collaboration which is about finding out how to improve and make changes in healthcare in the most effective way. We aim to improve the health and care of people in Scotland through better understanding of why certain healthcare interventions work in certain settings and not in others, and how we can ensure improvement is effective consistently and over time.”

The funding is being provided over five financial years. The contributions from the four funders are: The Scottish Funding Council £1 million, The Chief Scientist Office £1 million, NHS Education for Scotland £750,000 and The Health Foundation £500,000 ( for this phase of the project).

Laurence Howells, Interim Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, said, “The Centre’s co-ordination of research into better patient care will greatly improve health professionals’ understanding of patient needs, locally and nationally. This will make a real difference to improvements in the delivery of better treatments and new services for people in Scotland.”

NES Chief Executive, Malcolm Wright, said, “To date, Scotland has relied heavily on international expertise to drive changes in Quality Improvement forward.   In supporting this Centre, we will establish a sustainable, national, collaborative resource and centre of expertise which will involve Higher Education, NHSScotland and partner agencies.”

Professor Nick Barber, Director of Research at the Health Foundation, said, “This innovative centre will enable research to flourish and help build capacity and capability for improvement science.  As an independent healthcare charity our goal is improvement of healthcare, and our contribution to this initiative will harness the data and knowledge generated by research to make a difference for patients and populations.”

 

Notes to Editors

The Centre’s partners are:

Universities – Dundee, Stirling, St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh Napier, Strathclyde, West of Scotland, Glasgow Caledonian, with support from Coventry, University College London and Ottawa.

NHS Boards – Tayside, Fife, Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Highland, Lothian, Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire and Arran

Third sector, patient, carer and community perspective – Scottish Health Council, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, Alzheimer Scotland, Ardgowan Hospice

National NHS – NHS Education Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, NHS National Service Scotland, Scottish Ambulance Service, NHS 24, QI Hub

Local authorities – Perth and Kinross Council, South Lanarkshire Council

Scottish Government – Quality Unit

Private sector – Scottish Care

International improvement science partners –  Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston, USA, Qulturum Center for Learning and Innovation in Healthcare, Jönköping, Sweden

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) SFC is responsible for allocating public funds to colleges and universities in support of Scottish Government priorities. SFC’s funding contributes towards the costs of learning and teaching, skills development, research, innovation and other costs such as staff, buildings and equipment in Scotland’s 19 universities and 25 colleges www.sfc.ac.uk

The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) is part of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates. It supports and promotes high quality research aimed at improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of services offered by NHSScotland and securing lasting improvements to the health of the people of Scotland www.cso.scot.nhs.uk

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is NHSScotland's national education and training Board. They are responsible for supporting NHS services to the people of Scotland through the development and delivery of education and training for all those who work in NHSScotland. They also work closely with a range of partners to deliver its vision of Quality Education for a Healthier Scotland www.nes.scot.nhs.uk

The Health Foundation is an independent charity working to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK.  It wants the UK to have a healthcare system of the highest possible quality – safe, effective, person-centred, timely, efficient and equitable. The Health Foundation believes that in order to achieve this health services need to continually improve the way they work. They inspire and create the space for people to make lasting improvements to health services.  They also conduct research and evaluation, put ideas into practice through a range of improvement programmes, and develop leaders and share evidence to drive wider change www.health.org.uk

Contact:
Roddy Isles
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University of Dundee
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