Revolutionising healthcare with data-driven innovation

Danny Bosch headshot

Meet Danny Bosch, Associate Director of Business Development and Commercial at Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP). In his blog, Danny details how ICHP are working towards creating healthier populations, by unlocking the potential of innovation and supporting NHS and industry. 


Tell us about your company!

Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) is an innovation agency. We deliver evidence-based complex change in the health and care system through our partnerships with industry, NHS organisations, academic institutions, tech companies and charitable organisations, to support creating healthier populations.  

Our collaborative approach to innovation allows us to find new ways to solve problems by harnessing relationships between our NHS colleagues and industry, while our smart use of data allows us to create actionable insights to underpin effective change. Whether it is supporting Primary Care teams to use a new asthma dashboard we have created or identifying and testing improvements in the Chronic Kidney Disease pathway, we believe in solving real world problems by using real world evidence to deliver real world change.

What is your company’s greatest achievement so far?

Over the past three years we have been able to drive more change at a greater scale thanks to our hosting of Discover-NOW, a research hub for Real World Evidence, so I think that would have to be one of our greatest achievements. Our data capabilities allow us to deliver a model of innovation focussed on having the right people in the room (e.g. clinical and academic leads, patients, innovators), supported with the right insights to target impactful points of intervention within existing care pathways, with new and innovative approaches. We call this our Living Laboratory approach.

The success has been demonstrated within a range of projects; from our development and implementation of a new risk stratification model for diabetes to our review of the heart failure pathway which identified £27.4m savings a year to the North West London (NWL) health service through increased diagnosis within community settings, reduced unplanned hospital encounters, and improved patient convenience and outcomes as a result of a remote monitoring app for heart failure medicines optimisation. 

Access to such a rich real world evidence dataset of >2.5million North West Londoners, is a much more efficient and cost-effective way of testing new ideas for the NHS and industry alike, and our Discover-NOW hub has been integral to building cross-sector connections that deliver real improvements to the health of our local populations, as well as those nationally and internationally.

ICHP is also involved and driving forward the strategic vision of the London Secure Data Environment for research, launching on 1 April, part of a vital scheme investing in the future of health research. Our involvement includes engaging and involving Londoners’ in the conversation as to how their data is used for research and development.

What have been your biggest challenges so far?

Being part of the NHS family while also supporting industry to make connections within the health service can be a difficult path to navigate, but I believe it to be the single most important thing we can be doing to ensure the successful continuation of the NHS. Our experience playing the honest broker in between both parties, working alongside colleagues in academia and the third sector too, has demonstrated how we can all come together around a clear problem, and focus all our individual expertise and specialisms on solving some of healthcare's most urgent issues. Over the years, we have developed successful collaborative partnerships with some smaller and larger pharmaceutical and MedTech companies directly and as part of grant funding, and we would like to grow this over the coming years, just as we have grown in size and capabilities. We are continuously on the lookout for innovations and new partnerships where we can co-develop solutions to problems.

What’s your company’s ambition?

ICHP aims to create healthier populations, and we believe that unlocking the potential of innovation and supporting our NHS and industry clients to deliver sustainable and effective change is the best way to do this. We strive to build partnerships with both big and small companies in the life science sector, crowding in expertise and funding to deliver on our portfolios of coordinated theme-based projects, designed to tackle our local health sector’s most pressing issues – like cardiovascular disease, and children and young people’s mental health.

Creating these ‘Living Labs’ is our mechanism for ideating and rapidly testing innovative solutions in a real-world setting that target most impactful points of intervention within care pathways. Our ambition is to continue building more extensive collaborative partnerships with organisations whose expertise match our local health care teams' needs and whose values align with our own, so more of our local population can benefit from innovation.

Why did you join the BIA?

We joined the BIA for its network and to bring our experience and expertise to the conversation around stimulating the UK life sciences sector. We already work with a number of BIA members and seek to grow this over the coming years. The NHS and industry need each other, and we would also like to play a role of honest knowledge broker for both sides to drive positive outcomes. Lastly, we would like to stay up to date with UK life science trends and be exposed to new innovative companies that have aligned ambitions.

What excites you about the UK life sciences sector?

The UK life sciences sector is instrumental in being able to improve outcomes in population health and health care. Having a scientific background with international experience in early-stage ventures, I think we are privileged in the UK to have some really exciting innovative research and development taking place at our universities and in industry. The UK life sciences sector is growing, and we are on this journey of becoming a scientific superpower. A lot is still needed to get there, and we all play a role in driving that ambition, but it is this ambition and the potential we see that we should really be excited about. There is some amazing research coming out of universities which stimulates the creation of new ventures and is feeding the ecosystem that drives the development of new technologies that solve the problems of tomorrow. Playing a role in this, is very exciting.

If you could invite any scientist or entrepreneur to dinner, who would it be and why?

I would say Brad Feld, an early-stage investor, writer and entrepreneur who co-founded Techstars and Foundry, though particularly known for his blogs and book ‘Venture Deals – Be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist’. This book was published at a time where there was little reliable information on how venture deals come together, and he consequently demystified a lot around this. Since publishing the book, he has continued supporting the startup ecosystem to maximise innovation and learning and has also founded, with Amy Batchelor, Anchor Point Foundation to support non-profit organizations who are doing innovative work in their communities. It was his book in particular that really got me interested in transitioning from researcher to the world of early-stage ventures. I would love to pick his brain to learn how he went about all his achievements.

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