With the nation’s health having been on all our minds during the last 15 months, the news that Dorset Integrated Care System (ICS), has been selected by the Health Foundation – an independent charity – to be part of its new programme supporting health care providers will be welcomed. It will enable faster and more effective uptake of innovations and improvements.

The Adopting Innovation programme is supporting four innovation hubs with funding of up to £475,000 each for two and a half years with Dorset ICS (Our Dorset) and its partners successfully securing the top award. The hub will be hosted by University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (UHD).

Innovations which can help meet Dorset’s priority health and wellbeing challenges, improve patient care, and save the NHS time and money, will be adopted, and used throughout the system. The innovations will help health, social care, and other services in the county – such as housing – meet the complex health needs of Dorset’s older population, health inequalities, and variation in life and healthy life expectancy. Other important areas will be help for the workforce, COVID response, winter planning and exploring digital innovations.

The hub will also help address inequalities, which have been exacerbated during the pandemic; and will support recovery, while ensuring new innovative models of care, including digital technologies, do not exclude members of the population.

Dr Karen Kirkham, integrated care system clinical lead in Dorset, said: “The Innovation Hub will give us the opportunity to adapt innovations best suited to meeting Dorset’s clinical priorities, and to spread these across Dorset, to provide equity of service, reduce health inequalities and improve care for patients.”

Richard Renaut, chief transformation and strategy officer at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are thrilled by this boost to our ambitions. This will help us adopt and spread proven innovations across all sectors in Dorset, both faster and further. Together with our partners, this will mean we can provide better care for our population.”