Summary
The Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) form the Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care System (ICS).
Working together, our system organisations that form our ICS are required to:
- improve the general health and wellbeing of our residents, and improve health and care services in the area
- tackle the inequalities which affect people’s physical and mental health, such as their ability to get the health services they need, and the quality of those services to help tackle health and wider inequalities
- get the most out of local health and care services and make sure they are good value for money
- help the NHS to support social and economic development in West Essex and Hertfordshire.
There are a number of statutory duties that the ICB and its partner trusts are required to fulfil by law and these include, amongst others, a duty in respect of research and a duty to promote innovation.
This Research and Innovation Strategy Group acts in an advisory capacity to the ICB Population Outcome and Improvement Committee, subject to awaiting changes to committee structure.
Purpose of the Research and Innovation Strategy Group and associated responsibilities
The group will advise on the coordination of research and innovation work, recognising gaps and suggesting how these gaps may be filled. It will act as a central point for information sharing. The group will have responsibility to:
- support an effective communication strategy for all parties involved in health, wellbeing and social care research and innovation across the ICS
- work closely with partners to support, develop and implement the Research, Innovation and Evaluation Strategy across the ICS
- provide input and insight into the setting of the objectives for the Research, Innovation and Evaluation Strategy making sure this represents best practice, the current national, regional and local agenda as well as the ICS partner priorities
- ensure research and innovation continues to be an integral part of care and our workforce is equipped with appropriate skills to deliver high quality research and innovation
- provide a mechanism for the membership to discuss and address local research and innovation priorities and, where appropriate, share resources to facilitate high-impact research that meets local population health and social care needs
- promote effective clinical and practice-based research and innovation; support the coordination of activities that improve, positively impact on, enable better health and social care outcomes for our population and reflect the ICS priorities
- work collaboratively with other transformational programmes as appropriate, ensuring that opportunities for joint working are exploited to enhance the overall ICS programme of work
- support the ICS to translate research and innovation into practice so that outcomes for our population continue to improve.
Membership
The group is chaired by Fiona Smith, West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Lisa Whiting, University of Hertfordshire. Representation is from the following organisations.
- Anglia Ruskin University
- Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust
- East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
- East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust
- Essex County Council (including Public Health)
- Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust
- Health Innovation East (formerly Eastern Academic Health Science Network)
- Health Tech Enterprise
- Healthwatch Essex
- Healthwatch Hertfordshire
- Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board
- Hertfordshire Care Providers Association
- Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust
- Hertfordshire County Council (including Public Health)
- Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Hertfordshire Urgent Care
- Lay Member(s)
- NIHR ARC East of England
- Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst
- The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust
- University of Hertfordshire
- West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
This group is open and inclusive and welcomes new partners to join as appropriate.
Governance and decision-making arrangements
The ICB Medical Director is the Executive with responsibility for research and innovation. These responsibilities are met through the HWE ICB Research and Innovation Senior Leadership team.
The Research, Innovation and Evaluation Strategy and its implementation is a core enabling strategy within the ICB and underpins the delivery of the five year Forward Plan. This is supported by the Hertfordshire and West Essex Research and Innovation Strategy Group.
The ICB Board has oversight of research and innovation via the Population Outcome and Improvement Committee (POIC) (Figure 1), subject to awaiting changes to committee structure.
Standing orders
Meetings
- The group will meet three to four times a year.
Quorum
- Unless otherwise stated, meetings will be scheduled for 1.5 hours.
- Six members will form a quorum, with at least two different organisations being represented.
- If within 20 minutes of the appointed time for a meeting to commence a quorum is not present, the meeting will be dissolved.
Declaration of Interest
These will be recorded at each meeting and all meetings within the strategy group where “Declaration of Interest” will be a standing agenda item.