This blog is guest written by Johnathan Hall, Business Partnerships Manager for Health and Social Care. Reflecting on key themes from UWE Bristol’s Festival of Research to explore how stronger collaboration between universities and health organisations can help tackle pressing challenges such as health inequalities and digital integration.
This week was UWE Bristol’s Festival of Research. Bringing together colleagues from across the university to collaborate, learn and explore some key themes that run thought research. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on a few ideas that came out of the opening address, specifically how UWE Bristol can work with organisations to collaborate more effectively and align around common goals.
Personally, I’ve worked within the NHS and supported health delivery for around 15 years, so my ears very much pricked up during Professor Sanjoy Shah’s keynote. Sanjoy is Joint Clinical Director for Green and Sustainable Healthcare at Bristol NHS Group, an intensive care consultant and a visiting professor at UWE.
He shared some really important insights into health inequalities across Bristol and the stark differences within the region. For example, residents in the most deprived areas of Weston-Super-Mare can expect to live around 10 fewer years in good health compared to those in Clifton. That really brings home the scale of the challenge.
Sanjoy also spoke about the frustrations he and his colleagues face with technical systems that don’t talk to each other, highlighting that as many as four different systems may be needed to build a full picture of a patient.
Solutions to challenges like these need to be developed rapidly and aligned with the NHS 10 Year Plan . This is where university collaboration and research are critical and can make a real difference. Universities have a major role to play in supporting health organisations to develop practical, real-world solutions to issues that directly impact care delivery.
This also closely aligns with some of the key themes coming through NHS Confed Expo last week. As with all sectors, AI is firmly on the agenda and is seen as a key enabler in delivering the 10 Year Plan, as well as helping to automate process-driven tasks.
While many people across the health sector are already using AI in some form, its formal integration into business-as-usual is still in the early stages. However, as momentum builds, it’s clear that adoption is about to accelerate.
There’s also a real need to ensure that AI and wider innovation are introduced into the health environment in a clear, coordinated way. As Sanjoy highlighted during the Festival of Research, there are already multiple digital platforms in use to manage patient care. Without careful planning, there’s a risk that new AI solutions will simply add to this complexity rather than help resolve it.
Again, this is where universities can play a crucial role—as facilitators and conveners, bringing partners together and helping to navigate these challenges.
UWE Bristol is well positioned to continue stepping up and supporting collaboration with the health sector in a range of ways, through undergraduate programmes and apprenticeships that develop the future workforce, CPD that supports current staff, research across a wide range of health topics and innovation activity within the University Enterprise Zone. Bringing partners together through the Integrated Care Academy is another great example of how this collaboration can come to life.
At the heart of all of this is research, it helps to drive informed, forward-thinking decisions. The Festival of Research felt like a brilliant forum to bring these strands together, highlighting not only the importance of research, but also showcasing the breadth of impactful work already underway.
If you’d like to explore how your organisation could benefit from partnering with UWE Bristol, the Business and Alumni Partnerships team would be happy to start a conversation. Whether it’s workforce development, research collaboration or innovation support across any sector, you can get in touch at uwebusiness@uwe.ac.uk.