Home
South London Health Innovation Education Cluster (HIEC)
Health and social care professionals and researchers from across south London are working together to develop education and training to make sure the latest research results and best practice are implemented – and thus improve services for diabetes, mental health and stroke, and make infection prevention and control better.
About 30 organisations involved in commissioning and providing services, teaching and training, research and policy-making are collaborating to this end under the auspices of the South London Health Innovation Education Cluster (HIEC).
The SW London System teamed up with King’s Health Partners – the academic health sciences centre set up by King’s College London and NHS organisations in south east London – to successfully apply for HIEC status, which was awarded by the government at the end of 2009. With the status comes funding until 2012 to spend on developing training for health and social care workforces in the four chosen specialty areas.
The thinking behind the creation of HIECs is that teaching innovative practices and latest knowledge will lead to a better standard of services becoming more routinely available, taking all the needs of each individual patient into account.
The South London HIEC is jointly led by the SW London System and King’s Health Partners and brings together acute trusts, mental health trusts, primary care trusts and the London Ambulance Service as well as six universities, other colleges and education institutions, and many boroughs running social care and children’s services. Those involved include think tanks, charities, private sector organisations and Department of Health locally-based research networks.
As well as developing better education and training for health professionals across south London, the HIEC will enable the 30 organisations to work more closely together, so that the best services and ways of working can be shared and put into practice throughout south London.
‘Sometimes the evidence is there, or the guidance has been produced, but there has been a delay in the implementation of new knowledge or practice proven to work,’ says Laurence Benson, director of the SW London System. ‘What the HIEC mechanism and funding allows us to do is to work out ways of speeding up the introduction of up to date, evidence-based services and procedures, and give health and social care professionals the skills they need to deliver them.’
A small team of dedicated HIEC staff includes a relationship manager – to help make introductions between organisations and support individual projects – a communications manager, and a knowledge specialist. All three are charged with making sure every member organisation is kept up to date with new research and new services being developed, so all south London health and social care providers have the opportunity to offer the same high-quality services to residents.
The chair of the South London HIEC is Paul Lincoln, chief executive of the National Heart Forum, and the HIEC’s chief executive is Anne Greenough, head of King’s College London’s School of Medicine and director of education and training at King’s Health Partners.
The South London HIEC is one of three based in the capital.
To find out more about the work of the South London Health Innovation Education Cluster contact Darryl Barrett, daryl.barrett@kcl.ac.uk or Aaron Hamilton, aaron.m.hamilton@kcl.ac.uk or visit https://slondonhiec.org.uk/
