Focus on patient safety for new £4.5 million NHS Research Centre

New national research centre to trial new approaches to patient care - News Release

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00.01 BST
Friday 6 April 2007

Ensuring that healthcare is as safe as possible for patients is the aim of a new national research Centre announced today (Friday 6 April), bringing together academic and clinical researchers at St Mary's Hospital and Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trusts and Imperial College London.

The £4.5m Research Centre for NHS Patient Safety and Service Quality will be one of two such Centres in the UK, funded by the National Institute for Health Research. It will be based in Imperial College¹s Biosurgery and Surgical Technology section, at St Mary¹s Hospital, London.

The Centre will trial new approaches and technologies to reduce human error and improve patient care, for example through the use of pharmacy robots to dispense medication, and the involvement of patients themselves in spotting and anticipating medical errors.

Professor Charles Vincent , of Imperial College London and Director of the Centre for NHS Patient Safety and Service Quality, said: "We are delighted with this announcement. Everyone involved is looking forward to this great opportunity of improving safety in the NHS and researching new and innovative solutions to improve the service patients receive."

Preventable and non-preventable events in healthcare are a serious source of harm to patients and a large drain on NHS resources, according to research published in the British Medical Journal in March 2001. The study of 1,014 patients at two acute hospitals found that more than 10% of patients experienced an adverse event during their hospital stay.

St Mary¹s, Hammersmith and Imperial have a wealth of expertise in patient safety and healthcare quality. Units already run by the three organisations include the Clinical Safety Research Unit, the longest established patient safety research group in the UK, and the Dr Foster unit, which examines the quality of healthcare and addresses the impact of changes to patient care and their effect on outcomes in hospital (see Notes to Eds).

Since February 2006, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College and St Mary¹s Hospital have together been exploring a proposal to create the UK¹s first Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), bringing together the delivery of clinical services, teaching and research through a new governance structure.

The AHSC partners were also selected as one of the UK¹s 11 Biomedical Research Centres, in December 2006. The award guarantees the partners research funding of £19.5 million per annum for the next five years, and makes the West London BRC the leading centre for the UK. BRCs will be leaders in translating scientific research into benefits for patients.

Professor Stephen Smith , Principal of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College, and responsible for establishing the UK's first Academic Health Science Centre, welcomed the award made to the partners behind the AHSC. He said:

"Just as the AHSC will bring new treatments and innovations in healthcare to our patients, it is critical that we also undertake the best research to improve patient safety and service quality in the NHS, as it is this that provides a framework for an ever improving healthcare system."

He added: "The award of this national centre, on top of our Biomedical Research Centre status, recognises the strength of the AHSC approach, but more importantly its work will benefit NHS patients directly, both locally in west London and around the UK."

The Centre for NHS Patient Safety and Service Quality will initially focus on five areas:

• What information should be used within the NHS to enable clinicians and managers to thoroughly monitor and improve safety and quality
• The potential of new technologies to improve the reliability and efficiency of healthcare, such as using pharmacy robots and computerised systems for ordering medication
• How clinicians, managers and patients together, can have better safety skills and awareness of safety issues
• The basic processes used within healthcare and how these can be made as reliable and resilient as possible
• The role of managers in quality and safety, examining how their decisions affect the quality of care given to patients

-ends-

For further information please contact:

Abigail Smith
Imperial College London Press Office
Tel: 020 7594 6701
Email: abigail.smith@imperial.ac.uk

Notes to editors:

1. Research and quality improvement activity in the new Centre is founded upon work in four research groups:

a. Imperial College¹s Department of Biosurgery and Technology has strengths in the application of new technology, imaging and computing, ergonomics, clinical effectiveness and research in emergency medicine. The Clinical Safety Research Unit, which is the longest established patient safety research group in the UK, is part of this Department, which is based on the St Mary¹s Hospital campus.

b. The Department of Primary Care and Social Medicine at Imperial incorporates the Dr Foster unit, which examines the quality of healthcare provided by NHS organisations and addresses the impact of changes to patient care and their effect on outcomes in hospital. A suite of tools developed by the Dr Foster unit is now used in over two thirds of acute trusts.

c. The Academic Pharmacy Unit is a joint initiative between the Pharmacy Department at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and the School of Pharmacy, University of London. Most of its research focuses on the safety of medication.

d. The Department of Infectious Diseases at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust is focused on research in three key areas of clinical science: academic infectious diseases, infection and immunity and international medicine. Specific areas of interest range from tuberculosis through novel approaches in drug discovery to gram positive sepsis and hospital acquired infection.

2. Academic Health Science Centre: The AHSC will be the first organisation of its kind in the UK, formally bringing together the delivery of clinical services, teaching and research through a new governance structure. This integrated approach ­ joining together hospitals with medical education and research institutes ­ is in place in other parts of the world, such as the US, and is yielding improvements and better clinical outcomes for patients.

London¹s Strategic Health Authority has decided that the new organisation should ultimately work to become an NHS Foundation Trust (under section 5 of the Health and Social Care Act 2003) sponsored by Imperial College London.

The public consultation on the creation of the AHSC is due to start shortly. More information is available on the website www.ahsc.org.uk