The Wessex Cancer Innovation programme is a pioneering joint venture between Health Innovation Wessex (formerly Wessex Academic Health Science Network) and the Wessex Cancer Alliance (WCA) which commenced in December 2020.
It has been developed to identify and support the adoption of innovations that enable teams across Wessex to diagnose cancers at an early stage; a focus which follows the ambitious NHS Long Term Plan aim of diagnosing 75% of cancers at stages 1 and 2 by 2028.
The programme team is delivered by a Programme Manager who works with national and local cancer teams to identify suitable 'ready to go', evidence-based and tested innovations that address local, unmet needs.
To do this, the Programme Manager is:
- building links with local, regional and national teams involved in the diagnosis of cancer and the implementation of innovations
- developing relationships with cancer Site Specific Groups (SSGs) across Wessex
- gathering insight to understand which cancers would benefit the most from early diagnosis and map any unmet needs against available and proven innovations
- using the Health Innovation Wessex cancer innovation horizon scan to identify tested and proven innovations adopted by other health innovation network/Cancer Alliance teams that may benefit local need
- working with WCA and local cancer leads to establish spread and adoption plan of cancer innovations – including plans on how to identify suitable early adopters, innovation scale up across other relevant teams and longer-term sustainability of innovation adoption
- supporting the spread and adoption of nationally approved innovations
- enabling and supporting local teams to adopt relevant innovations
- working with the WCA team, supporting the development metrics to measure and monitor impact of any adopted innovations – including the measure of spread and level of adoption
- supporting the wider spread of innovations successfully adopted in Wessex with a positive impact to other health innovation networks, Cancer Alliances and the national cancer programme team through shared learning.
With links across both Health Innovation Wessex and WCA, the programme also works closely with the following national and local workstreams:
The Programme Manager will maintain regular communication with each workstream to ensure opportunities for collaboration are identified and utilised.
Stakeholders from the Wessex Cancer Alliance (including patient representatives) and local cancer teams are involved. This includes:
- NHS England and NHS Improvement
- Wessex Prevention and Early Diagnosis board WCA
- Wessex Primary Care Networks
- Wessex Voices (Patient Group)
- Dorset Cancer Partnership
- Site Specific Groups (SSGs)
- Specialist cancer teams
- Pathology teams
If you wish to discuss the programme or want to talk to the Programme Manager, please contact them via the link below.
