Health: Academic Health Partnerships

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for initiating this important debate. My interest in academic health partnerships arises from my time as a non-executive director at King’s College Hospital and currently as an independent panel member of the National Institute for Health Research, and to that extent I declare an interest.

The formation of King’s Health Partnership was the result of an enormous amount of discussion and consultation among the foundation trusts of King’s, Guy’s, St Thomas’s and SLAM, together with King’s College London. It is not the first time there has been co-operation between universities and hospitals; it is a long and honourable tradition. What is new for this country is the extent to which that co-operation takes place. To integrate care, education and research through governance and staff co-operation is vital if patients are to receive the full benefit of the existing research which is taking place.

While not attempting to claim that the King’s Health Partnership is the only viable model, its networking approach has some huge advantages—buy-in from the staff, transparency and galvanising the support of the local communities in the area. AHSCs are important because of their potential for co-operation with the pharmaceutical industry and in attracting the best staff from home and abroad. In this, I add my plea to the Government that they will not stand in the way of attracting the world’s best researchers and clinicians to this country. The intergovernment concession will not fit this particular case and it would be a tragedy if we were to slip down the league table because we were not able to recruit from abroad; this is a highly mobile population.

As a panel member for NIHR I can see for myself the wonderful work which is being done in this country by highly distinguished clinical academics, a significant number of them clustered around academic health science partnerships. Groundbreaking work is being done on Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and various forms of cancer which will be translated into treatments within the foreseeable future. However, some of this work is expensive and some of the research is not cost effective in terms of the tariff received. The AHSCs were established without any guarantee of extra money and have been consolidated through good will, commitment and a vision for the future. Unless the Government take these extra costs into consideration, it will be difficult to see how this good will and vision could continue indefinitely. I ask the Minister for an outline of the Government’s commitment to the continuation of these partnerships and some information about how they intend to promote them.