We have a core convening role of encouraging and enabling our regional health and care systems to work more closely together through considering the role of innovation and ultimately helping to create a culture of innovation with the ultimate objective of improving population health. This is particularly important in the context of the emerging integrated care systems (ICSs), which are due to become enshrined in law before the end of the current financial year.

To this end, we have recently concluded a collaboration with the NHS Leadership Academy in the East of England to bring together professionals working across health and care to support the embedding of collaborative, compassionate and inclusive leadership within developing ICSs. Delivered virtually over three sessions, ‘Leading for change - the big collaboration’ explored the concept of collective innovation and developing high-performing integrated teams, showcasing the leadership skills and behaviours that health and care leaders will need for the successful integration of services across health, social care and the third sector. We are delighted that over 700 of you registered to attend these sessions.

Eastern AHSN partnered with the Cambridge Rare Disease Network (CRDN) to run a live pitching session at RAREsummit21, which convenes patients, advocates, healthcare professionals, investors, researchers, academics and leaders in the rare disease space.

One of our priorities to address the everyday issues our citizens face through better use of innovation. To do so effectively, we needed to listen to those with lived experience to understand their challenges. We gathered insights provided by the rare disease community through a survey launched last year at the CRDN’s RAREfest20 event. These insights were developed into specific challenges which we put to the innovation community.

The session featured five selected innovators with solutions identified as having the potential to improve the lives of people living with rare diseases, inviting feedback from the community and an expert panel.

We have partnered with the NHS Leadership Academy in the East of England to launch a series of bitesize sessions aimed at health and care professionals to share the principles and tools of quality improvement (QI). This fully-funded programme will feature four pre-recorded sessions by our Director of Quality improvement Caroline Angel, available to view on demand, with two live online Q&A opportunities.