A bold challenge in the West Midlands addressed by a new ‘Living Lab’
The newest Lister Alliance Living Lab to join the fold will be established in the West Midlands with Birmingham, the country’s second largest city, leading the charge. This is an area comprising 6.2 million people, where more than 100 languages are spoken, and a diverse population that reflects the global community. With this picture comes unique healthcare challenges — and a huge opportunity for a bespoke, iterative, collaborative living lab approach led by the University of Birmingham in partnership with the Cisco Country Digital Acceleration programme.
Our project aims to improve communication between primary, secondary, and at-home care to prevent unnecessary admissions and readmissions, and address health inequalities through better preventative health measures. The region is also home to the West Midlands Secure Data Environment, which will be a vital component of the West Midlands Living Lab as we seek to break down siloes between existing services in the region, and orchestrate better, connected health and social care.
We will launch with pilots based in community hubs, NHS Primary Care and hospital trusts to form key anchor points with our local citizens. Partnerships with community organisations will help us expand our footprint and ensure we are addressing the needs of our diverse neighbourhoods.
Advancing the 10 year health plan
The timing is ideal. The University of Birmingham’s recent testing of wearable devices to continuously monitor medication response in patients with heart disease has been included in the government’s Fit For The Future 10-year health plan for England as an example of how to transform NHScare. The research has shown, among other things, how wearable tech can provide information similar to that recorded at hospital visits. More trials will be needed, but these early indications show promise for a less hospital-centric and more personalised approach to care.
Our new living lab will build on this type of work: orchestrating data, inviting industry in to innovate, driving productivity — and better health outcomes. This includes exploring technologies for remote monitoring, developing AI tools for predictive analysis, improving discharge processes, and integrating data into electronic patient records. If we’re going to make good on the big bets outlined in the Fit For The Future plan, then we will need to bring the many great people already doing the work — and the valuable data it generates — together.
Hope in healthcare
We are optimistic and ambitious to improve routine NHS care through deploying new technologies, but also realistic that we need to avoid further health inequality. Living labs are just as much about finding out what does work as what doesn’t, and we plan to achieve this through co-production with local community leaders.
Our coverage area spans different urban and rural populations, and will benefit from prior learning through the Lister Alliance. The healthcare needs in one area of a city like Birmingham can be very different to those for people living just a mile down the road, let alone in a village in Shropshire. We remain realistic about the task of integrating new technology to improve routine NHS care, testing methodologies and producing generalised solutions that can be adapted to the specific needs of communities.
Our goal, ultimately, is to create something that amounts to far more than the sum of its parts. To do that means identifying the specific value that each of those parts can offer, and then producing the recipe that will allow for impact in the lives of people in the West Midlands and beyond. This living lab will kick off with an inaugural meeting on the 25th November, involving stakeholders from primary and secondary care NHS services, health technology companies, researchers, patient and public representatives, health policy experts and community organisations. Do reach out to us if you’d like to get involved.