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New year, new sponsor - NHSX becomes the newest sponsor

Starting the new year with something positive, we are thrilled to welcome NHSX as a brand new sponsor! They have become part of one of the most robust and diverse data communities in the UK, and will benefit from the innovation-rich environment that we have built collaboratively with all of our sponsors over the past 5 years. NHSX will also play a crucial role in helping us as we go from start-up to scale-up, feeding in to the direction and scope of our work and projects so that we continue to innovate openly with data to improve lives, help people, and create value.

NHSX launched on 1st July 2019 with the purpose of speeding up digital transformation in the NHS and social care in order to bring improvements to patients and carers, health and care professionals, and other colleagues. Teams from the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and NHS Improvement work together in support of five missions:

  • Reducing the burden on clinicians and staff, so they can focus on patients;
  • Giving people the tools to access information and services directly;
  • Ensuring clinical information can be safely accessed, wherever it is needed;
  • Improving patient safety across the NHS; and
  • Improving NHS productivity with digital technology.

The scope of their work includes setting standards for data and interoperability, supporting innovation, developing digital skills within the NHS, helping to set national data strategy, and delivering the resources that enables solutions to some of the toughest challenges facing the NHS.

This sponsorship is built on a foundation of previous work with the NHS, where ODI Leeds demonstrated that open innovation practice could be applied to complex challenges, such as the potential for synthetic data, or how to get more insight from NHS survey data.

Facing some unique and complex challenges, NHSX spent some time with us at ODI Leeds to help identify some initial ideas and set the scope of our collaboration with them. They're keen to put even more energy into collaboration across the NHS, so we can expect more 'hackathon' style events in the future, alongside a follow-up to the SynAE event where we can learn from the project and think about where else it can be applied.

They will also be joining in with #OpenDataSavesLives - one of the core themes identified in our strategy for the future, using open innovation in health and social care. There are opportunities to get involved in Bradford on 23 January, or in Leeds on 24 January, with both sessions following a similar agenda. The aim is to build a definition of 'Open data Saves Lives' with input from those who work in, or are passionate about, health and social care. Just like we started for #OpenGovTech, building things together can make sure it is inclusive, representative, and citizen-centred.