The programme in London 2024

Our theme in London in 2024 is Together to Regenerate Health and Care.

The International Forum will take place in ExCeL London in the heart of the thriving London Docklands community, a testament to the power of regeneration. East London has undergone a remarkable journey of rejuvenation and renewal, aided significantly by the London 2012 Olympics. Today, it stands as a vibrant, diverse, and resilient community.

The 2024 International Forum draws inspiration from this remarkable transformation.

What do we aim to achieve?

As we explore quality improvement projects from across the UK and the globe, we aim to ignite a collective effort to regenerate health and care.

We seek to harness the potential of places, cutting-edge technologies, and fresh perspectives to redefine health for populations. Together, we are shifting from treatment providers to architects of a collaborative system deeply integrated into our communities.

We believe in the power of forging partnerships, leading with empathy, and cultivating trust and safety. And, we are committed to addressing the social determinants of health, recognizing that true progress in health outcomes requires tackling the root causes.

Our groundbreaking programme will showcase inspirational improvement work from all sectors and discuss how we can create a system of health and care that truly meets the needs of our communities.

Only by uniting together can we create change.

1. Safety

Patient safety in healthcare involves the prevention of harm through the effective mitigation of risk – and incorporating aspects of safety science including human factors. Patient safety also involves learning by investigation, reporting and change after events. Hear about projects that reduce the possibility of harm caused by healthcare, but also submissions from those working in harm and risk reduction in other industries. From technological safety nets to organisational culture improvement, how are we keeping each other safe as we go about the day to day work of delivering healthcare, plan new services and work across professional boundaries.

2. People

Hear about improvement projects where health and care professionals are working together with patients, carers or people with lived experience to co-produce a real difference to communities. This includes patient leaders who are creating real improvements to the experience of patient care. Hear from healthcare professionals co-producing with patients, as well as co-production across social care and education sectors to improve health.

3. Populations

In this new stream, we are recognising the imperative for healthcare improvement to change to meet the needs of the whole population. Hear about:

• how we can use approaches such as large data sets to understand need and plan care for whole communities, how technology is bringing new challenges and opportunities for scaling care across populations
• the application of improvement approaches work that focuses on a specific population group, health outcomes and health inequalities
• improvement across boundaries and examples of collaborations across organisations and sectors (e.g. health, social care, education)

4. Change

Change is the process by which we make improvement happen. This stream will focus on how we think about change and practical actions that enable change, leading to improvement such as small-scale change initiatives, how can we make change happen across a whole system? How has social movement thinking or complexity principles of appreciative inquiry or implementation science or any other approach been applied to change in health and care.

5. Science

This stream will showcase the best work that is applying the science of improvement with high rigour, and advancing the field of improvement science. Hear from those applying good design and evaluation methods in health and care improvement. In this stream, we will define the approaches and methods being applied within health and care to improve quality of care, improve population health, tackle equity and enhance sustainability.

6. Leadership

Leading for better health is becoming ever more complex and challenging, yet also ever more exciting since we have a constantly-growing base of experience on which to draw. “Leaders” can be health or care professionals, patients, community-leaders or others. What does “leading well” look like today in a complex world with multiple needs and aims? How can leaders encourage progress at one and the same time across all dimensions where results matter: patient outcomes and experience; population health and equity; sustainability/environmental health; cost; staff experience and wellbeing? Hear about creative solutions and strategies which are of practical use to people working toward better health – be they community organisers, ward team leaders or executives in large systems, charities or other organisations. This stream will be developed in partnership with BMJLeader, the journal for evidence and debate in leadership across health and care.

Patient representation and lived experience

Streams will be co-produced with patients, service users, citizens and carers wherever possible. We have representatives on these groups in all our planning committees, and are working to increase the representation of these groups as speakers and delegates.

Read more about our Lived Experience and Communities Panel.

Read more about our Programme Advisory Committee.