We all know knowledge is power. This makes information – and data – the wind beneath knowledge’s wings. Kathleen McGrow, Chief Nursing Information Officer for the Microsoft Health & Life Science Industry Team, believes nurse informaticists and Artificial Intelligence will revolutionise healthcare across the world.

Kathleen McGrow’s clinical background includes many years as a trauma nurse and building an electronic health record system for the Amazon basin. She’s also worked at GE Healthcare, Phillips, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland trauma resuscitation unit. During her time things have changed beyond recognition.

Having experienced computer systems built by engineers who never went near a hospital ward, let alone asked nurses what they wanted, she could see the potential in developing user-friendly tech to help healthcare workers. So her next adventure saw her taking a Master's in nursing informatics.

Kathleen believes that a lot of power from the frontline was given away in the early days, and organisations still deploy systems that don't necessarily meet the needs of the workflow. With hindsight, data wasn’t collected and stored in a truly useful way. And now that computers, tablets and phones are used in wards, do they create a barrier between the practitioner and patient?

AI is going to be huge in automating manual processing for nurses, Kathleen believes, with the possibilities being transformative – from imaging helping to stage wounds, to automating everyday manual processes. It’s just a case of working out the best way to fit that into the process.

In the face of growing challenges such as ageing populations, decreasing birth rates and a lack of new talent coming into nursing, Kathleen believes AI can not only take on some less technical roles but has great potential for education. Making your organisation open to digital improvement is vital and nurse informaticists can be thought leaders in this.

Find out Kathleen’s predictions for the future of healthcare including:

• Why there will be more Hospital at Home
• Why ambient experience or voice recognition is going to be huge in nursing
• Why generational differences in healthcare staff should be given more attention
• Why interoperability and standardisation are crucial
• And why it’s more important than ever that we look after healthcare staff properly

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“Leadership for improvement starts at the very top and has to be authentically led from the chief executive and the board all the way through the organisation. But their role is very much the sponsor, rather than to be involved in the day-to-day work.”

In this episode, Lara and Na’eem talk to quality improvement guru, Dr Amar Shah. Amar is Chief Quality Officer at East London NHS Foundation Trust and a consultant forensic psychiatrist. He is national improvement lead for mental health at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and honorary visiting professor at City University and the University of Leicester. He is also an improvement advisor and faculty member for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, teaching and guiding improvers and healthcare systems across the world.

From Amar’s first foray into improvement work, and his view of quality improvement as a method, a process and a mindset, through to how organisations need to establish the right infrastructure for quality improvement, this far-reaching discussion touches on so many aspects of this crucial area of healthcare. Discover Amar’s perspective on how:

• the command-and-control structure of the NHS needs to be devolved for effective quality improvement;
• leadership needs to understand that they are no longer there to solve problems but to empower and coach others to solve problems;
• too much quality improvement can be dangerous;
• keeping it simple and enabling people to make a difference is vital;
• quality improvement can produce evidence for service redesign;
• quality improvement needs to be part of the management system, alongside planning, assurance and quality control; and
• equity will be one next areas of focus for quality improvement.

Plus, discover a Small But Mighty idea, that is supremely powerful in building relationships and bonds between colleagues.

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“NHS staff already know how to improve things – we just now need to give them a voice.” So says Nicola McQueen, CEO of NHS Professionals – the largest temporary staff supplier to the NHS (which provides just over 3.5 million clinical hours every month) – and CEO of Doctors Direct, the locum service for NHS Professionals. She is also non-executive director of ImproveWell. Here she shares her experience of mobilising huge swathes of staff during the pandemic with Lara Mott and Na’eem Ahmed.

“Nobody told me in my interview that I was about to lead a business through a pandemic!” To say Nicola was thrown into the deep end (after just five months on the job) would be an understatement. But good things happen in hard times, as she tells us. And after 20 years in staffing strategy, she found there was still more to learn.

At first, a vigorous sense of mission was more crucial than ever – and at NHS Professionals this was getting as many workers to the frontline as quickly as they possibly could. “Anything that was going on in the business at that time, if it wasn't to do with [that mission], we just stopped it and we stopped it flat,” explains Nicola. But on top of this, efficiency needed to rocket, and empathy brought to the fore. There was a feeling of connectedness in that everyone was throwing themselves at the cause. But, as Nicola points out, “we're not all in the same boat, we just happen to be sailing in these same unpredictable seas”. Nicola’s mission became about “promoting honesty, integrity, accountability,” as well as making the organisation “agile, flexible, fast and creative”.

Find out why:

• welcoming and celebrating staff is about more than paying lip service;
• empathy in leadership is more important than ever;
• the ‘sprint then fall off the cliff’ mentality is lethal – downtime needs to be in-built;
• we do need to sweat the small stuff;
• technology is important in the journey;
• building in long-haul energy is a long-term goal; and
• looking after the workforce is a key priority.

“We've got a huge responsibility to try and keep hold of all of those people that stepped up through the pandemic.” Everybody has got staff retention at the forefront of their mind with the huge labour shortage the NHS is facing. “I think that making sure that we're addressing staff experience is just more important than ever now,” she says.

Plus, discover a no-brainer of a Small But Mighty idea, which has saved a lot of time and frustration.

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Hassan Chaudhury believes that herein lies the rub. He explains to Lara Mott and Na’eem Ahmed why you not only need to own the problem you’re trying to solve, but you also have to distance yourself from it to get perspective. And always listen to the data.

If anyone knows the lay of the land, it’s Hassan Chaudhury. Not only does he promote the UK Digital Health sector abroad at Healthcare UK – a joint initiative of the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and the Department for International Trade (DIT) – but he is also part of the commercial team at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, a member of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Innovation Committee, the PM Society and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Healthcare Sector Executive Committee, and holds an Honorary Research post at Imperial College London for his work in data science.

But he hasn’t always been so deeply embedded in the system. Hassan admits that when he was an entrepreneur, he didn’t use the resources that he now promotes (‘I was a complete lone wolf’). He learnt his lesson. Now he helps the healthcare sector export and encourages innovators to come to the UK in what he calls a ‘matchmaker’ role, which builds propositions.

“Before you scale, you've got to get your hands dirty, you've got to know what that problem is… [to] sit there in the dirt. And only then when you feel that problem and understand it, can you scale it. And in healthcare, that's multi-faceted,” he says.

We also discover what this self-confessed data geek thinks about evidence and impact – “It's not just what was happening in the lab. It’s about the deployment. And that's where I see the future.”

In the discussion, we consider:

• How do we work out what is good innovation?
• If you don't have real-world evidence, how can you prove the value of interventions?
• Why it’s crucial that we stop making the same mistakes.
• Why we need to make the system more conducive to the adoption of innovation.
• Is there just too much data?

Hassan’s frank and illuminating answers will help innovators at every level think about how they approach system. And hear a Small but Mighty idea that really turns the tables.

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This time, co-founders Dr Na’eem Ahmed and Lara Mott talk to Helen Bevan, Chief Transformation Officer at NHS Horizons and Göran Henriks, who is Chief Executive of Learning and Innovation at the Qulturum in Jönköping, Sweden. These esteemed titles provide merely a glimpse of their cumulative 70 years in health innovation, however. Alongside her day-job (for which she has been recognised as one of the most 60 influential people in the history of the NHS) Helen provides advice, guidance, and training on transformational change to healthcare leaders across the world; whilst Göran is also a senior fellow of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the chair of the Strategic Committee of the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare.

The pace of change has been positively affected by the pandemic, and those who had already invested in their improvement capabilities have been on the front foot. But are we in danger of going back to some of the old ways? How do you give the people at the heart of huge, hierarchical institutions the agency and autonomy to make change happen as we move forward? How can we create learning systems? We hear what the gurus, who’ve experienced more than most, believe.

Find out:

• Why we shouldn’t be working harder but thinking about what to stop doing (as much as what to start doing)
• How feedback from the frontline is more critical than ever
• How leaders can motivate an exhausted workforce – and how psychological safety and a sense of belonging are paramount
• Why you don’t always have to ask for permission – experimentation is the order of the day
• How each and every one of us has phenomenal power – but you can’t be a change agent on your own
• Why purpose, a vision and a mission are crucial as well as collaboration
• How with wisdom, comes trust and believing the people

A window into the thinking of these hugely experienced innovators is a real privilege.

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Recognising your sphere of influence – how to spur improvement

This time, co-founders Dr Na’eem Ahmed and Lara Mott talk to hat-juggling Dr Dominique Allwood, who is Deputy Director of Strategy and Improvement at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, and Assistant Director of Improvement at The Health Foundation. She was recently seconded to the NHS Nightingale Hospital, London where she was Medical Director for Nightingale Two.

From her journey into clinical leadership, through to the role that healthcare professionals and their organisations can play in improving people’s health in a broader social sense, we talk careers, improvement and more. Hear Dominique’s thoughts on:

• Challenging bias, mentoring and forging a hybrid career path in healthcare
• Maintaining optimism ten years on from the Marmot review – considering what you can influence here and now
• The difference between biology and biography in terms of health outcomes
• Helping and anchor institutions add social value without it becoming a box-ticking exercise
• Making equity issues visible and allowing a safe space in which to discuss them
• Integration with social care and really understanding an individual’s healthcare journey
• How tech can help us notice and respond
• Why we need to get better at gathering insight and nuance to build a culture of compassion.

Plus, a Small but Mighty solution to the many challenges of working with PPE - for staff and patients.

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For questions or to provide feedback on this episode, please email: theimprover@improvewell.com

In this fascinating episode, Lara and Na’eem are joined by two innovators at the forefront of developing a pioneering way to measure human performance at work.

Jon Pitts is the founder and chief technical officer of IHP Analytics. As a neuropsychologist with extensive experience in elite human performance, he has attended five Olympic Games and worked in Formula 1 and with the military. Rob McCargow is Director of Artificial Intelligence at PwC and an evangelist for the responsible adoption of AI and advanced analytics. Together, they’ve been working on a novel project to create work-life analytics to support PwC’s wellbeing strategy.

This first model, which can generate a score for an individual’s wellbeing, has evolved through extensive data monitoring and analysis. As we start to imagine a ‘normal’ future, everything is up for grabs. To that end, PwC has a new approach to empowered flexibility, where staff have full freedom to work where and when they want. Helping staff to reach their potential also benefits the business as well as the individual, which is why this is just the beginning…

Among the many complex topics covered, we consider:

• The importance of strong foundations to support a new technological approach
• Why we need to help humans keep up with significant changes
• How communication makes a difference
• The benefits of sharing personal data, for staff and employers alike
• Responsibility when evaluating intelligent data insights

Plus, discover the difference between subjective and objective data, why stress is a good thing, and how you can use your personal data to your own advantage.

And get some ‘Small but Mighty’ thoughts we could all do with implementing.

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Follow Jon and Rob on Twitter

Co-founders Na’eem Ahmed and Lara Mott talk to the hugely charismatic and inspiring Gerard Harkin – Head of Innovation at Roche Diagnostics – about all things innovation and keeping the passion alive.

What’s the worst thing that can happen? That’s the attitude Gerard believes we all need to embrace when we think about problem solving. We all make mistakes and sometimes sticking your neck out is the only way to implement change. Find out:

• Why innovation isn’t just about tech
• How to embrace change at scale
• Why experimentation and not fearing failure need to be in a company’s DNA
• How igniting a passion for potential should run from top to bottom
• Why you need to question your assumptions and back up everything with evidence
• How giving everyone permission to try things out is game-changing
• Why hierarchy can impede organisations
• Whether seniority of role should be the deciding factor in who leads
• And where diversity and inclusion fits into the picture

Fundamentally, it’s about giving everyone permission to try new things but also about highlighting the successes. Keeping your teams’ eyes shining with a real love of possibility is crucial. It’s a cultural thing.

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For questions or to provide feedback on this episode, please email: theimprover@improvewell.com

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