Health Innovation Manchester as AHSS - the Test of a Hypothesis.

John Rigby,Jose Pineda Mendoza,Jillian Yeow,Godwin Chukwukelu

doi:10.5334/ijic.5837

Abstract

The ambitious and wide-ranging paper on Academic Health Science Systems [‘AHSS’] [1] proposed a new model for health innovation and stimulated considerable interest. The paper made three main assumptions about AHSS: i) university-based centres should play linchpin roles in health and social care innovation; ii) medical innovation cannot be achieved without links to industry; iii) innovation occurs at the scientific end of a discovery-care continuum. But the paper had a pregnant coda for the NHS, and GM devolution in particular: the authors explicitly linked their view of the need for the integration of university-based research and health care delivery to population level approaches, suggesting that vertically integrated AHSSs should ultimately transform into integrated care organisations. When Manchester’s experiment in the devolution of health and social care as a place-based approach to health and social care began in 2015, Health Innovation Manchester was created as an AHSS to support innovation in the Partnership. Five years after the start of devolution, this short paper, which is based on a longer study of Health Innovation Manchester’s development [2], provides an overdue reflection on the proposition advanced just over a decade ago [1].

Highlights

The authors conducted a study in 2020 of Health Innovation Manchester
When devolution of health and social care began in Manchester in 2015, Health Innovation Manchester was created, based on the Academic Health Science System [AHSS] model, to support innovation within the Partnership
Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) in the US were originally single organisations in one place, but gradually some AHSCs comprised a number of spatially distributed organisations

Summary

Introduction

The authors conducted a study in 2020 of Health Innovation Manchester. The study examined the first five years of Health Innovation Manchester’s history, focussing on the AHSS model upon which Health Innovation Manchester was based, and the wider context of innovation, driven by the integrated care model. There distinct centres – Academic Health Science Centres (AHSCs) – had emerged, based on integrating at a single location three interdependent activities: research, clinical practice and education. The model was claimed to connect activities on a ‘discovery-care continuum’, along which ideas flow linearly [1] ‘from bench to bedside’, and ‘from local to global’. Their short paper discussed actors and roles – being a theory of the middle range – but did not clarify all the distinctions between innovation and delivery systems, nor the extent of connections between health and social care. The authors reached the conclusion that vertically integrated AHSS’s could evolve ‘to become accountable care organisations ... financially responsible for the health of the populations they serve’ [1]

Discussion

Conclusion