From NHS Ambition to Action: One Year into the NHS 10-Year Plan with CGI
Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world – and a headline sponsor of this year’s festival. At a breakfast session held at the company’s Leeds office, we heard about transformational projects driving forward the three shifts at the heart of the NHS 10-year plan – with a particular focus on the move from analogue to digital.
The event began with dynamic opening remarks from Tim Williams, Senior Vice President Consulting Services for Health at the Leeds Business Unit of CGI UK (who also secured a coveted place on the podium in our fierce but friendly LDF ‘You Bet!’ competition).
In a transformation showcase we heard about a number of critical national projects demonstrating how NHS programmes are translating strategy into practical delivery.
Amy Lumsden, Senior User Research at CGI UK shared her experience working with NHS England and on community mental health service transformation – including work to help acute services understand community mental health services, identify pressures, and increase opportunities for digital transformation of services.
This aligns with the NHS 10 Year Health Plan‘s focus on developing a new neighbourhood model of community mental health – which aims to bring together a range of community mental health services under one roof, including crisis services and short-stay beds.
As people in crisis often present at A&E, Amy explained how a current qualitative research project includes speaking with health professionals such as hospital staff to explore their understanding of the community mental health services that are available, and to identify pressures in care pathways.
In Leeds, this proactive, preventative approach to mental health support is a shared citywide priority, underpinned by the Leeds Ambitions‘ commitment to creating a fairer, healthier city and tackling mental and physical health inequalities.
Through its pioneering neighbourhood health model, Leeds is combining population health analytics with a detailed picture of the social factors that shape wellbeing. By using linked data from the Leeds Data Model to identify need earlier and target interventions more effectively, Leeds is helping shift mental health care from crisis response to prevention.[1]
The city is also deepening its understanding of mental health outcomes by combining analysis of linked population data with insight gathered directly from local communities through the SEISMIC programme and uniquely connected academic partnerships.[2] [3]
Together, these novel approaches are helping services better understand inequalities, address the wider determinants of mental health, and design more person-centred support that reflects both people’s lived experience and real-world outcomes.
And it’s this combination of world-leading data assets, academic excellence and cross-sector collaboration that is increasingly setting the city apart on the national stage – a topic at the heart of a discussion hosted by Leeds Today:
Leeds 2031: Insight into a Northern Powerhouse with Leeds Today
Leeds has a distinctive combination of strengths that few places can match.
This was the consensus from a panel chaired by Zandra Moore MBE – CEO & co-founder, Panintelligence & Zygens – who took an incisive and energised look at major investment opportunities for this Northern Powerhouse in the next five years.
The session pointed to analysis showing:
Leeds is the UK’s second-largest financial and professional services hub, with tech companies growing 125% faster than the national average and AI job growth outpacing London.
Now, the panel argued, it is time to build more boldly on these foundations.
By aligning and amplifying investment already flowing into the region, from AI growth-zone funding to the new northern scale-up fund, the city has an opportunity to accelerate progress in areas where it already plays a leading role.
With a unique combination of assets to attract investment and accelerate growth, Leeds is the only UK city home to:
- both the health and financial regulators
- NHS England’s headquarters
- a cluster of rich data sources, expertise and digital infrastructure
- the Northern Square Mile of financial and professional services
The panel, made up of Alex Craven, co-founder, The Data City; Rich McIntyre, CTO, CGI UK and Elizabeth Young, Investment Manager, PXN Ventures North Of England, urged Leeds to take its ambitions even further when it comes to backing its strongest sectors by ‘placing bigger, focused bets’ on health and finance.
Leeds ranks in the top three globally as a healthtech hub, and is a world leader in AI, digital and data. And all this despite receiving less investment relative to other major cities.
And the city’s extraordinary spin-out creation rate means Leeds isn’t just home to tech companies – the University of Leeds is blazing a trail when it comes to building the businesses of the future, with more spin-outs on the Leeds Tech Map than Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Hull and Salford combined.
The panel highlighted that organisations such as Nexus Leeds and Northern Gritstone have been pivotal to boosting entrepreneurship and commercialisation. Business leaders agreed that Leeds should supercharge its business support infrastructure and set its sights on more healthtech facilities bringing together innovators, investors, researchers and NHS partners under one roof.
As the first phase of Leeds’ Innovation Village, the city’s plans to turn the Grade II listed Old Medical School into a healthtech innovation hub respond to these calls, in one of Leeds’ most exciting property developments to date, led by Scarborough Group International.
Located in the heart of the city, the transformation will blend historical architecture with 21st-century digital and clinical infrastructure – designed specifically for start-ups, scale-ups, and partners building the future of healthcare.
Funded by a £160m West Yorkshire Investment Zone, the Old Medical School joins a growing portfolio of initiatives designed to accelerate innovation. These include the £2m Health Innovation Leeds Incubator, which provides bespoke support to help businesses overcome barriers to growth, and Propel HealthTech, a £4.5m accelerator led by Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber that helps innovators access the expertise, partnerships and NHS pathways needed to bring solutions into healthcare settings.
While the discussion looked ahead to the opportunities of the next five years, Leeds is undoubtedly already turning ambition into action.
From world-first surgical techniques, to globally-leading trials, organisations like Leeds Teaching Hospitals together with city partners, are driving innovations that are improving outcomes for local people today – which we saw in action at the Trust’s brilliant session:
Digital health: what’s the point? With Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Strolll
In an event putting patient need at the heart of health innovation, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust asked how promising digital health technologies can move from an innovative idea to something that makes a meaningful difference to people?
Almost 100 attendees from healthcare, industry and academia came together at Thackray Museum of Medicine for the session, delivered by the Trust in collaboration with digital rehabilitation company Strolll.
From the very first x-ray images of DNA and creation of the clinical thermometer to the UK’s first hand transplant, Leeds has been transforming health and care for over a century.
The UK’s largest independent medical museum, the Thackray was a fitting backdrop to look explore the city’s continued pioneering work.
Opening the event, Dr Ai Lyn Tan, Medical Director for Research & Innovation Department at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said:
Technology may be impressive, but unless it addresses a genuine need and can work safely, effectively and equitably in everyday life, it remains only a promising idea.
The real test of digital health is not what the technology can do. It is what the technology enables people to do.
Bringing that journey to life was the story of Strolll, a UK health technology company whose augmented reality platform is used by clinicians to deliver rehabilitation for people living with neurological conditions.
Strolll’s founder, Tom Finn, shared the story behind the technology. The idea began at home, on the kitchen floor, as Tom tried to help his dad, Nigel, with his walking. Seeing how simple visual lines on the floor improved everyday life for his father, who was living with vascular dementia and Parkinson’s disease, Tom experimented with augmented reality technology to allow these visual cues to be summoned anywhere via smart glasses.
From its origins rooted in lived experience, the company’s approach has continued to be shaped by those living with conditions such as Parkinson’s. This commitment was reflected in the session, where Philippe Evans shared his personal experience of using the product and the difference it has made to his daily life.
A father of three and grandfather of five, Philippe was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2023. He highlighted that there are approximately 166,000 people living with Parkinson’s in the UK, but each person has a unique journey. Philippe noted that Strolll’s ability to be personalised to someone’s individual needs and experience made it a particularly valuable tool.
The event was a powerful demonstration of why patients need to be active partners in the development and evaluation of new health technologies.
Professor Rory O’Connor, Charterhouse Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Leeds’ School of Medicine and Lead Clinician for Rehabilitation at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, reflected that a shared focus on patient need has helped the technology progress through research and evaluation:
This really is the ideal model for how health technology should be developed and adopted. It starts with a genuine clinical and patient need and brings together patients, clinicians, researchers and industry to develop a potential solution.
That idea is now a fully developed platform, purchased by NHS trusts and in routine use by physiotherapists and occupational therapists with people affected by stroke, brain injury, Parkinson’s, MND, FND and other neurological conditions, with the AR technology enabling:
- Digital assessments: clinicians and patients use AR glasses to enter a shared virtual world to conduct digital assessments previously done in gyms.
- Gamified rehab: traditional physiotherapy exercises are converted into five specific games projected via the glasses. This “gamification” increases patient engagement by shifting the focus from the effort of movement to achieving game scores.
- Remote monitoring: A web portal allows clinicians to monitor progress remotely and bespoke rehab programmes by adjusting difficulty levels without being in the same room as the patient.
Backed by NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) funding, attendees also heard how the technology is now being evaluated through RESTART-PD, a University of Leeds-led study investigating whether augmented reality headsets can improve walking and balance for people with Parkinson’s compared with usual rehabilitation.
The study is being carried out in partnership with the National Demonstration Centre in Rehabilitation at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, the University of York, Devices for Dignity: The NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in long term conditions, and Strolll.
Delivered by senior physiotherapists at the Trust, including Caroline Gill and Frances Nuttell, the trial is in active recruitment with more than 165 participants already taking part nationwide.
It was great to experience Strolll’s augmented reality technology first-hand, as well as speak directly to researchers, clinicians and industry representatives involved in its development and evaluation.
The event was organised by the Trust’s Innovation Pop Up which helps to connect clinicians and industry to advance health innovation.
Like many of the sessions we attended during the festival, it underlined that Leeds is a city where you can build, test and scale solutions in real-world environments that reflect the models of care the country is actively investing in – integrated, preventative, community-based, and digitally enabled.
Thanks to the passionate collaboration between our universities, NHS Trusts, local council, industry and community organisations, Leeds is the place where breakthroughs are born and amazing ideas are tested at speed. It’s where bold partnerships turn world-leading research into reality, and where businesses start, scale and go global.
The future of healthcare is here.
ℹ️ References and further information
[1] Leeds population health approach: 4. Population health infrastructure – Leeds Health and Care Partnership
[2] SEISMIC: using population-based systems to deliver improved and equitable health and care services for people with multiple long-term conditions: Creating a service system architecture for people living with multiple long-term conditions – Scien…
[3] Related research: Mapping Care Pathways of Mental Health Patients: A linked data analysis of primary and secondary care in Leeds: Mapping Care Pathways of Mental Health Patients: A linked data analysis of primary and secondary ca…
