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6th UK Implementation Science Research Conference

  • Programme
  • Plenary Lectures
  • Poster Presentations
  • Oral Presentations
  • Meet the Experts
  • Panelists
  • Organisation Team
Menu
  • Programme
  • Plenary Lectures
  • Poster Presentations
  • Oral Presentations
  • Meet the Experts
  • Panelists
  • Organisation Team

Plenary Speakers

Dr John Øvretveit
Jessica Read
Dave Taylor
Dr John Øvretveit

Dr John Øvretveit

Director of research and professor of healthcare innovation implementation and evaluation at the Medical Management Centre, The Karolinska Institute, Stockholm

Lecture title: Improve-mentation for an effective response to Covid-19

Abstract: In this lecture, John will describe how his team have used implementation and improvement methods and knowledge to contribute to the healthcare response to the outbreak in Stockholm, Sweden. The Covid-19 crisis has challenged implementation and improvement researchers and practitioners from around the world to apply knowledge and methods from the field to help develop an effective response to the outbreak. The crisis has also stimulated innovation, and highlighted a need to develop our sciences through research to better understand why some implementation and improvement initiatives work, while are others are less successful.

In this session, John will discuss the issues that the outbreak has raised for improvement and implementation researchers and for practitioners, and look at what implementation and improvement experts can contribute to the post-Covid paradigm. He will consider the implementation of clinical interventions and practices, as well as service delivery and population health interventions during the first weeks of the emergent response, and in the second and third wave of Covid-19 needs.

John will consider ways forward for the following challenges:

  • Where evidence of effectiveness is limited, is there a role for implementation and improvement sciences and practitioners?
  • How do we best adapt an intervention that is proven to be successful elsewhere?
  • Regarding sustaining a new practice, scaling up and assessing the return on investment, what do we have to offer as researchers and practitioners?
  • For implementing complex multilevel interventions, what are the challenges and solutions for studying and assisting implementation?
  • How do we develop our research and practice for the new digital health era?
 

Biography: Dr John Øvretveit splits his time equally between two positions: director of research for primary and community healthcare services, and professor of implementation and improvement at The Karolinska Institute, Sweden. He is also a Swedish citizen and resident of Stockholm, the capital of the country.

Translations of some of his 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers and books have been made into ten languages. Six of his books have won publications awards, including twice winner of the European Health Management Association Award and the Baxter health publication of the year prize, for “Action Evaluation” (2002) and “Health Service Quality” (1992).

He was awarded the 2014 Avedis Donabedian international quality award for his work on quality economics, served for 12 years as a board member of the USA Joint Commission International and chair of their healthcare quality and safety standards committee. He is founder and chair of the Quality Improvement Research Network and a board member of the Global Implementation Society.

John was previously professor of health policy and management at Bergen University Medical School, Norway and at the Nordic School of Public Health, Goteborg, Sweden. He currently holds visiting professor appointments at Kaiser Permanente Department of Research and Evaluation, The Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Australia, and is a visiting scholar at CERC, Stanford University.

Jessica Read

Jessica Read 

Deputy chief midwifery officer, NHS England, who has extensive experience over a 30- year career of implementing organisational change and service improvement.

Lecture title: Challenges and successes of implementing policy into practice and the impact of Covid-19 on NHS maternity services

Abstract: In this lecture, Jessica will highlight the challenges found when implementing research and policy into practice.  Jessica will draw on case studies including: delivery of the ambitions of the National Maternity Review ‘Better Births’ and regional workforce directives. These will be explored from an implementation of research and maternity policy perspective, and will be used to underpin discussion of the following questions:   

  • How do we make sure that we get the research question right?
  • What are the ‘golden nuggets’ that lead to successful implementation? 
  • What can we learn from examples where implementation of poor research has been successful in directing service change?
  • Who are the real movers and shakers we need to influence to be able to implement research and influence policy?
  • What can we learn from the impact of Covid-19 that can be beneficial for the future?
 

Biography: Jessica Read RN RM BSc(Hons) MSc is a Florence Nightingale leadership scholar. She trained as a midwife in south-east London benefitting from the teaching of the Sisters featured in the popular ‘Call the Midwife’ series. 

In over 30 years as a midwife Jess has worked across all aspects of maternity services covering clinical, managerial and regulation roles. Jess has experience in regional, national and international health strategy, and has authored chapters in recent publications of ‘Mayes Midwifery’ (2017) and Myles ‘Professional Studies for Midwifery Education and Practice’ (2019) as well as articles for journal publications. 

As a member of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Midwifery Forum Steering Committee, Jess represents the RCN on the Council of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and is a member of the ICM Regulation Committee. 

During the past six years, Jess has experienced the challenges of translating policy into practice by leading on the development of a new national model for clinical supervision and support for midwives (A-EQUIP), developed a platform for support, recruitment and retention for midwives working in London (Capital Midwife) and supported the delivery of national ambitions for maternity services across the NHS in England (Better Births). 

Jess has been in the role of Deputy Chief Midwifery Officer for England since January 2020 where she plays an integral role in supporting the delivery of the national ambitions of Better Births and the NHS Long-Term Plan, securing the highest quality of maternity services for mothers and their babies while supporting the Chief Midwifery Officer’s vision for England to be one of the safest countries in the world to give birth. 

Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor

Vice-chair, The Patients Association, an expert in implementing digital health technologies.

Lecture title: Patient perspectives on the uses and abuses of IT

Abstract: In this lecture, Dave will draw on his own experience as a patient to discuss the design of digital technologies for patient benefit. Dave will illustrate his talk with examples of patient portals and other digital communication technologies, including the virtual world of Second Life. We all aspire to centre services around the patient, but how many service improvement projects are structured to achieve this outcome? 

In the time of Covid-19, we have seen NHS services and systems adapt rapidly to the changing circumstances, with the adoption of digital services where previously there was resistance to change. Some of these new systems will have benefitted those patients equipped to take advantage of them and will have disadvantaged others. 

Many of these changes will persist – but which will they be? Covid-19 has created a large number of natural service improvement experiments. However, given the timeframes involved in setting up these experiments, patient needs, experiences and outcome measures will not have been adequately considered. Implementation scientists should take the opportunity to study the impact of these changes, highlighting the best local examples and helping to scale them across the NHS. We still have the opportunity to reshape services and to accelerate the digital transformation of the NHS, with services actually centred around the patient. But, how?

Biography: Dave Taylor is vice-chair of The Patients Association and patient lead for the Royal Society of Medicine’s Digital Health Council. Dave retired in 2019 from Imperial College London where his research interests revolved around the use of digital technologies to help patients maintain contact with clinics between visits, to help surgical teams communicate, and to provide patients with more complete and secure healthcare records. Before Imperial College London, Dave worked for more than 25 years in commercial settings, working in digital technology product development, application, marketing, sales and support. As a vice-president of Esselte, a market leading £1billion office products manufacturer, he developed and marketed a range of innovative digital office products. He later became responsible for the development and operation of Esselte’s websites and intranets in over 23 countries, supporting all of their global and local brands. He went on to lead knowledge transfer for the Quality of Life Division of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he helped to modernise communication between NPL’s science teams and the NHS.

Dr John Øvretveit 

Director of research and professor of healthcare innovation implementation and evaluation at the Medical Management Centre, The Karolinska Institute, Stockholm

Improve-mentation for an effective response to Covid-19

John will describe how his team have used implementation and improvement methods and knowledge to contribute to the healthcare response to the outbreak in Stockholm, Sweden. 

Abstract: The Covid-19 crisis has challenged implementation and improvement researchers and practitioners from around the world to apply knowledge and methods from the field to help develop an effective response to the outbreak. The crisis has also stimulated innovation, and highlighted a need to develop our sciences through research to better understand why some implementation and improvement initiatives work, while are others are less successful. 

In this session, John will describe how his team have used implementation and improvement methods and knowledge to contribute to the healthcare response to the outbreak in Stockholm, Sweden. He will discuss the issues that the outbreak has raised for improvement and implementation researchers and for practitioners, and look at what implementation and improvement experts can contribute to the post-Covid paradigm. He will consider the implementation of clinical interventions and practices, as well as service delivery and population health interventions during the first weeks of the emergent response, and in the second and third wave of Covid-19 needs.

John will consider ways forward for the following challenges:

  • Where evidence of effectiveness is limited, is there a role for implementation and improvement sciences and practitioners?
  • How do we best adapt an intervention that is proven to be successful elsewhere?
  • Regarding sustaining a new practice, scaling up and assessing the return on investment, what do we have to offer as researchers and practitioners?
  • For implementing complex multilevel interventions, what are the challenges and solutions for studying and assisting implementation?
  • How do we develop our research and practice for the new digital health era?

Abstract: The Covid-19 crisis has challenged implementation and improvement researchers and practitioners from around the world to apply knowledge and methods from the field to help develop an effective response to the outbreak. The crisis has also stimulated innovation, and highlighted a need to develop our sciences through research to better understand why some implementation and improvement initiatives work, while are others are less successful. 

In this session, John will describe how his team have used implementation and improvement methods and knowledge to contribute to the healthcare response to the outbreak in Stockholm, Sweden. He will discuss the issues that the outbreak has raised for improvement and implementation researchers and for practitioners, and look at what implementation and improvement experts can contribute to the post-Covid paradigm. He will consider the implementation of clinical interventions and practices, as well as service delivery and population health interventions during the first weeks of the emergent response, and in the second and third wave of Covid-19 needs.

John will consider ways forward for the following challenges:

  • Where evidence of effectiveness is limited, is there a role for implementation and improvement sciences and practitioners?
  • How do we best adapt an intervention that is proven to be successful elsewhere?
  • Regarding sustaining a new practice, scaling up and assessing the return on investment, what do we have to offer as researchers and practitioners?
  • For implementing complex multilevel interventions, what are the challenges and solutions for studying and assisting implementation?
  • How do we develop our research and practice for the new digital health era?

Biography: Dr John Øvretveit splits his time equally between two positions: director of research for primary and community healthcare services, and professor of implementation and improvement at The Karolinska Institute, Sweden. He is also a Swedish citizen and resident of Stockholm, the capital of the country. 

Translations of some of his 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers and books have been made into ten languages. Six of his books have won publications awards, including twice winner of the European Health Management Association Award and the Baxter health publication of the year prize, for “Action Evaluation” (2002) and “Health Service Quality” (1992). 

He was awarded the 2014 Avedis Donabedian international quality award for his work on quality economics, served for 12 years as a board member of the USA Joint Commission International and chair of their healthcare quality and safety standards committee. He is founder and chair of the Quality Improvement Research Network and a board member of the Global Implementation Society. 

John was previously professor of health policy and management at Bergen University Medical School, Norway and at the Nordic School of Public Health, Goteborg, Sweden. He currently holds visiting professor appointments at Kaiser Permanente Department of Research and Evaluation, The Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, Australia, and is a visiting scholar at CERC, Stanford University.