Context
The Imperial Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) was established in 2007 as a partnership between Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust with a vision to translate discoveries achieved through research into medical advances to benefit patients.
- Imperial College Health Partners has been formed by healthcare providers in partnership with the College as a company to roll out innovation into the community of North West London, with the aim to influence clinical practice. An application has been submitted by the partnership for formal designated as an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) which would lead to funding to facilitate the roll-out of research programmes.
- The changing landscape for the NHS offers opportunities for the AHSC. The Shaping a Healthier Future consultation undertaken by NHS Northwest London aims to determine how best to deliver healthcare across the local area. In the response submitted by the Imperial AHSC the priority was to support changes that would speed and strengthen the adoption of research and innovation for the benefit of patients.
- The option supported by the Imperial AHSC would see St Mary’s becoming an acute medical centre and a trauma centre, Hammersmith becoming a specialist centre and Charing Cross becoming a local hospital. If this were to proceed:
- Facilities for Imperial’s medical school at Charing Cross would need to move and it would be incumbent on the NHS to fund the redevelopment. The opportunity to design a new space to train medical students may require change and innovation in the curriculum to support the delivery of world-class education.
- The changes at Hammersmith, with its more specialist focus, would integrate with plans for a Research and Translation Hub at Imperial West.
- Any reconfiguration would require changes to the nature of services for out of hospital care and to mechanisms for admitting patients. It will take at least three years for these to be implemented.
Discussion points:
- The College should consider how to respond to the shift as medical care is increasingly provided out in the community. Medical students traditionally learn in hospitals but in the future they will need to learn to treat patients in a wide range of settings.
- There is much to learn from the innovative approaches to the medical curriculum developed for the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, the partnership between Imperial and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. E-learning resources, simulation activities and team-based learning could be replicated to modernise Imperial’s London-based medical course.
- There should be an increased focus on collaborating with the Faculties of Engineering and Natural Sciences and the Business School in delivering medical research and education to develop innovative approaches.
- Joint programmes developed by the Academic Health Science Centre and the Imperial College Business School could be used to train a leadership cadre in the clinical arena who are equipped for the challenges ahead.
- The new Crick Institute, of which Imperial is a founding member, offers significant opportunities for interdisciplinary research and translation within biomedicine and will make London a focus for these activities at an international level.
- With a wide range of agendas impacting on the work of the NHS, it will become an increasing challenge to deliver the highest quality of medical education. The College should consider how best to tap into the funding for medical activities that is flowing into London and to ensure there is appropriate provision to support the training of future doctors.
View the presentation given by Professor Dermot Kelleher, Principal of the Faculty of Medicine