Innovation, Research and Improvement System (IRIS)
What is IRIS? Innovation, research and improvement are essential elements of a thriving health and social care system. IRIS will be the front door into, and out of, our system and will facilitate system transformation and partnership working.
What does IRIS do? IRIS will provide visibility across the system, joining up activity and provide a space for sharing best practice. IRIS will bring together system partners and external stakeholders, including academia and industry, to create new opportunities and transform the delivery of health and social care.
Mission: In Humber and North Yorkshire, the number of years a person lives in good health is less than the national average. To narrow this gap, we need to radically transform the way we address health and care challenges. Our Innovation, Research, and Improvement System (IRIS) is creating the conditions for bigger and bolder innovations and improvements within health and care. By supporting, enabling and connecting our integrated care system and working with leading external partners, we will secure data driven and evidence-based solutions for our health and care grand challenges. Our unique approach brings people together to encourage and promote innovation, research, and improvement in health and care. By doing so, we will improve the healthy years lived by our communities.
System Transformation
Our system needs a focal point for innovation, research and improvement to coalesce around. We are bringing innovation, research and improvement together because these domains are interconnect and alignment will enable us to capitalise on translating research findings into innovation and improvement.
IRIS will focus on bringing together what already exists in our system. We will harness existing networks, activity, and resources to create a system that encourages, promotes and enables research, innovation and improvement.
IRIS Virtual Hub
As a virtual hub for stakeholders, IRIS will provide visibility across the system, joining up activity and provide a space for sharing best practice. IRIS will bring together system partners and external stakeholders, including academia and industry, to create new opportunities and transform the delivery of health and social care. The IRIS virtual hub will:
- Provide a point of contact for innovation, research and improvement
- Engage with partners, academia and industry
- Signpost and connect stakeholders
- Broker new collaborations
- Undertake demand signalling
Contact us at: hnyicb-ery.iris@nhs.net
Join the IRIS FutureNHS workspace, and/or one of our Communities of Practice:
This space is for any of our partners, across the system – so colleagues from Universities, Hospital trusts, Voluntary sector, Local authorities etc. It’s a place to share information and collaborate, inform colleagues of events and upcoming funding opportunities.
We have three communities of Practice, one for each area, Innovation, Research and Improvement, each run every 8 weeks or so, and give colleagues the chance to collaborate, share best practice, learn about new opportunities. These are online meetings, with occasional face to face events. Please use the form to request to join them.
To join you will need to provide a work email address, ending in gov.uk, or ac.uk, or nhs.net, etc
If you wish to join the IRIS FutureNHS workspace, please complete the form to request access here:
IRIS Community of Practice & FutureNHS Sign up form
Click the icon to the left for sign up.
You can also find us on LinkedIn.
IRIS Priorities
Championing innovation in health and care by:
- Enabling evidence-based adoption and spread through evaluation
- Identifying and championing innovation to address unmet need
- Developing processes to support innovation
Building a system-wide approach to research by:
- Advancing access to data for research and data-driven decision making
- Enabling collaborative research across organisational boundaries
- Supporting the delivery of research in primary care
Enabling a system-wide culture of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) by:
- Supporting and leading a whole system improvement community
- Encouraging the adoption of CQI thinking and culture to ensure a CQI approach is at then heart of everything we do
- Empowering colleagues to work together and combine resources to achieve the best outcomes for our population
We are doing things differently in Humber and North Yorkshire with our Innovation, Research and Improvement
System by:
- Creating the conditions for innovation, research and improvement to flourish
- Establishing partnerships between health and care partnerships between health and care partners, academia, and industry
- Supporting data-driven and evidence-based solutions to tackle our challenges
Grand Challenges
IRIS will support prevention, population health management and tackling of health inequalities as we look to the future of health and social care, taking the opportunity to work as a system to develop sustainable solutions. Through the virtual hub IRIS will share our health and social care grand challenges and will work with partners to identify high priority areas where innovation, research and improvement can add value. The first two grand challenges that IRIS will focus its demand signalling function on are:
Start well: Early intervention mental health support for children and young people
Die well: Quality care at end of life for individuals across health and social care
IRIS Primary Care Research and Development Service
- The Research and Development Service aims to promote and facilitate the local provision of high-quality research, making clinical research accessible to patients registered with a local GP. This will improve care, provide better quality services, and improve health outcomes for our local patients.
- We provide information and advice to patients and public about what it means to participate in research and how they could get involved.
- We can assist researchers to make sure they follow correct Health Research Authority (HRA) guidance, for example, how to apply for ethics approval.
- We provide advice and support when carrying out research i.e., helping researchers to recognise the difference between research, service evaluation and audit.
- We make sure researchers follow the correct research processes and regulations.
- We provide strategic insight for Research and Development.
- We help to identify funding opportunities and assist researchers with bids and research grants.
- We support and facilitate access by staff to research training and education opportunities.
As a patient, researcher, clinician or academic looking for advice and guidance, please do not hesitate to contact us at hnyicb-ery.r-d@nhs.net
Meet the IRIS Team.