The Avoiding Hospital Admission HIT's achievements in 2017-18

Professor Sarah Purdy and Dr Peter Goyder, Directors of the Integration to Avoid Hospital Admissions Health Integration Team (ITHAcA HIT), give an update on the HIT's activities in 2017-18.

  • 11th May 2018

Professor Sarah Purdy and Dr Peter Goyder, Directors of the Integration to Avoid Hospital Admissions Health Integration Team (ITHAcA HIT), give an update on the HIT’s activities in 2017-18.

This year we have continued with our focus on implementation into practice and in increasing our knowledge mobilisation capacity as a HIT.

We held a consultation meeting at the end of last year involving HIT members, other academic colleagues from both universities and secondary care clinicians to assist Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (BNSSG CCG) with the development of the urgent care strategy for Bristol. This was an opportunity for academics and clinicians to feed evidence from topic experts into the strategy consultation at an early stage. A consolidation meeting in April this year was attended by members of ITHAcA, who participated in the workshops and will be supporting BNSSG CCG with the urgent care strategy in the year ahead.

Our links with BNSSG CCG will be further strengthened by Dr Helen Baxter, who was awarded a Knowledge Mobilisation NIHR fellowship on urgent care. This will allow Helen to continue her work as an embedded researcher at the CCG and further her cross-boundary urgent care work between the universities, hospital trusts and the CCG. One of the primary aims of Helen’s fellowship is to increase knowledge mobilisation sustainability and capacity across Bristol.

The efficient models of care for general practitioners working in or alongside emergency departments study led by Professor Jonathan Benger is progressing well. The first knowledge output, a taxonomy of current models, will be available later this year.

Our work with the Physics Department at the University of Bristol, developing a primary care device to rapidly detect antibiotic resistance in common bacteria, has continued with great success. We have been awarded a Discovery Award by the Longitude Prize and formed a spin-off company with funding from Innovate UK.

Future plans for ITHAcA focus on working with colleagues within our local Sustainability and Transformation Partnership Healthier Together, to identify the opportunities for the HIT to contribute to the longer-term strategy for the region in the priority area of urgent care.