Harm occurring during healthcare is a huge global challenge. Patient safety involves the prevention of this kind of harm through the effective mitigation of risk – and incorporating aspects of safety science including human factors. Patient safety also involves learning by reporting, investigation and change after events. This includes developing compassionate and inclusive restorative processes after harm has occurred.

We want to 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. We’d be keen to see submissions from e.g. safety science specialists, risk management teams, leadership and investigators looking to share good practice.

For Oslo, we are particularly interested in projects that demonstrate:

» Taking a human factors approach to the prevention of harm

» Learning by reporting, investigation and change after events

» Safety-II: enhancing systems and learning from successes

» Lessons from harm and risk mitigation outside of healthcare

» The role of technology in patient safety

» Embedding patient safety into organisational culture, across professional boundaries

» Organisational Flow

» Psychological Safety

Calling all change-makers in health, social care, and education working to improve health. We are looking for inspiring improvement projects where people with lived experience are uniting with professionals to make a real difference. If you’re involved in creating better healthcare, social care, or educational outcomes through collaboration, either as a patient leader, healthcare professional or patient, we want to offer the chance for you to share your learning and to celebrate your achievements.

For Oslo, we are particularly interested in projects that demonstrate:

» Co-production in action

» Advancing Equity

» Health and wellbeing of staff

» Finding human-centred hope for the future

» Human and tech collaboration

» Metrics that matter

You can find more detail on the above People topics here.

In this stream, we are recognising the imperative for improvement to meet the needs of the whole population. We are particularly interested in work that addresses one or more of the following areas:

» How can we use approaches to understand need and plan care for whole communities e.g. large data sets, methods to engage and listen to communities

» The application of improvement approaches that focus on a specific population group, health outcomes, health inequalities, equity or social determinants of health

» Improvement across boundaries and examples of collaborations and or capability building across organisations and sectors (e.g. health, social care, education)

» How technology is bringing new challenges and opportunities for scaling care across populations

» Overcoming global health or inclusion health issues

» How health systems or organisations are taking a systematic approach to population health and equity and sharing the impact

We are particularly interested in work that demonstrates articulation of the challenges and impacts that have been achieved.

For Oslo, we are particularly interested in projects that demonstrate:

» New and novel methods for change

» Partnerships for change (especially with people who use services and/or communities)

» Making change happen across a whole organisation, system, region or country

» How a theory of change helped you to achieve your aims

» When high-performing teams become change agents

» What you learned when change didn’t work

How to build collective intelligence about change

This stream will showcase new learning and application in the science of improvement. We’re particularly keen to hear from people applying good design and evaluation methods in health and care improvement. We’re looking to define the approaches and methods being applied within health and care to improve quality of care, improve population health, tackle equity and enhance sustainability. We’ll be working with the Editors of BMJ Quality and Safety and BMJ Open Quality to highlight the best work submitted.

» For Oslo, we are particularly interested in projects that demonstrate:

» How generative AI is being used as part of quality work

» Latest advances in the use of data and analytics in the field of improvement

» Large-scale design – how to apply rigour in the design and evaluation of large-scale improvement programmes

» New thinking on spread and scale methods

» How to equip people, organisations and systems with the skills and support needed to apply the science of improvement with rigour

What does “leading well” in health and healthcare look like today with systems under great pressure and 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; safety; population health and equity; sustainability/environmental health; cost; staff experience and wellbeing? And at the same time balance the costs and meet the expectations of politicians and populations?

Leaders are found in many roles and contexts, including: patients, community organisers, clinical leaders, executives in large systems, charities or other organisations. We especially want to see submissions focusing on leadership grounded in practice and real-world application, and the results or impacts for patients, professionals or organisations. We are also looking for submissions from or which include younger/emerging leaders. We are keen to be surprised by any thought provoking ventures.

This stream will be developed in partnership with BMJLeader, the journal for evidence and debate in leadership across health and care.