Stroke is not the same as cancer. Maternity services are not the same as psychological therapies. But is there learning to be gained from thinking about how system change happening in one clinical area could be transferred to others?
 
That was the premise behind our event series, in partnership with UCL, and funded by the National Institute for Health Research, which explored how the learning from stroke reconfiguration in London and Greater Manchester could support successful system change across the NHS.

The series started with two webinars (which you can watch, or read Angus Ramsay's blog about them), and built to a full-day event with more than 60 people from across health and care. So what did we learn?

I’m delighted to have been part of the recent learning from stroke webinars, where we had wide-ranging discussions of key aspects of major system change.

In our first webinar, Naomi Fulop, Steve Morris, and Ruth Boaden presented our NIHR research on centralisation of hospital stroke services in London and Greater Manchester, reflecting on how changes were led and put into action, and their impact on patient outcomes, delivery of evidence-based care, cost-effectiveness, and patient experience.

In our second webinar we turned to international perspectives on major system change: Allan Best gave insights on key principles and approaches to carry out such changes, and Kristian Taageby Nielsen shared the case of current work to reconfigure hospital care across the whole of Denmark.