Connecting expertise from our universities and NHS organisations helps translate discoveries into better health and care.
Bristol Health Partners exists to help people live longer and healthier lives and improve how services are delivered. It does this by integrating, promoting and developing the region’s strengths in health and care services, research, innovation and education. Its Health Integration Teams work across the partnership to tackle critical health and care challenges.
In 2021 Bristol Health became an Academic Health Science Centre, one of only eight in England designated by NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Having an Academic Health Science Centre benefits the region because it brings together expertise from universities and NHS organisations. Working with partners including local authorities and industry improves health and care services by translating early scientific research and discoveries into benefits for individual patients and local and national populations.
Ours is the first Academic Health Science Centre in England to develop a fully integrated relationship with its Integrated Care System – a relationship which NHS England has recognised as an exemplar of best practice.
This means close joint working of researchers with patients and healthcare professionals to agree what works best to improve health and care across the region. That could include recommending new technologies that can better support patients or helping to measure whether changes to services are working for patients and practitioners.
The South West has world-leading researchers on topics as far ranging as vaccines, healthy childhoods, mental health, cardiovascular disease and responsible use of data. Researchers can bring the latest evidence of what works, new ideas, and funding to tackling the health and care issues that matter most to local people.
Experience of COVID-19 has shown that connecting researchers with people who plan and deliver health and care services helps make safer, higher quality decisions.
This partnership means that more local patients will benefit from a health and care system that learns from the very best evidence from around the world.