The need for a coherent and impactful innovation ecosystem has never been greater.
About Us
Cardiff and Vale RIC Hub are part of a national co-ordinated innovation network funded by the Welsh Government.
We are hosted by the Health Board and sit within the Dragon’s Heart Institute. We work as an enabler of the Regional Partnership Board’s (RPB) transformation programme and complement the Regional Integrated Fund (RIF) focussing on innovation infrastructure and activity helping to integrate health and care services.
What We Do
Our emphasis is on importing and exporting good practice, sharing learning and experience and driving the adoption and spread of activity which will achieve higher value for service providers, patients and citizens alike.
Our Work
The hub have identified common themes that span across various parts of our health and social care system and population groups. We’ve collated regional and national innovation activity that address these themes in order to support sharing of learning and celebrate good practice.
Our Network
In addition, closer working with national bodies such as the Life Sciences Hub Wales, Improvement Cymru, the Small Business Research Initiative Centre of Excellence, Bevan Commission Exemplars and Health Technology Wales is essential to: access shared expertise and common functions such as horizon scanning and technology appraisal; and to present Wales as a single coherent system which is attractive to external innovation and improvement partners, including industry and strategic funders.
The aim of the RIC Hub Network is to:
Contribute to a coherent innovation ecosystem that can demonstrate evidenced case studies.
Improve outcomes for service users by identifying and promoting high-value innovation and improvement activity, for example through prevention, earlier diagnosis, more accurate intervention, and addressing unwarranted variation and duplication in the system.
Support the spread and adoption of current innovations promoted within NHS Wales and social care.
Support the development and wider adoption of new ideas across Health Boards or Regional Partnership Boards.
Setting Our Agenda
The Hub aligns to ‘A Healthier Wales’ and Wales Innovates: Creating a Stronger, fairer, Greener Wales as the over-arching policies. The Ministerial priorities for the Programme are those confirmed in the NHS Wales Planning Framework 2022-2025 and, as a key constituent of the Programme, the Network will be a key contributor to its broader innovation aims and goals.
How We Work
The Network has a defined remit for co-ordinating activity and identifying innovation that works and delivers better quality and value, compared to the current state. The Hub supports innovation in line with the following Design Principles from A Healthier Wales:
Higher Value
Achieving better outcomes and a better experience for people at reduced cost; care and treatment which is designed to achieve ‘what matters’ and at which is delivered by the right person at the right time; less variation and no harm.
Evidence Driven
Using research, knowledge and information to understand what works; learning from and with others; using innovation and improvement to develop and evaluate better tools and ways of working.
Scalable
Ensuring good practice scales up from local to regional and national level, and out to other teams and organisations.
Transformative
Ensuring new ways of working are affordable and sustainable, that they change and replace existing approaches, rather than add an extra permanent service layer to what we do now.
Spreading Good Practice/Case Studies
Storytelling is a huge part of what we do to share great innovations. Our storytelling aims to highlight evidence driven projects that relate to new ways of working that are affordable and sustainable and intend to replace existing outdated approaches. We tell the stories of those at the heart of our services so similar services can be spread, scaled and adopted across Cardiff and Vale, Wales and beyond. Others don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it.
Defence Medical Welfare Service Supporting The Frontline
The RIC Hub caught up with Mike Davies who has the incredibly rewarding role of connecting people to support in the community in Wales.
He uses social prescribing to provide person-centred care by unlocking solutions to improve wellbeing, support sustainable recovery, transition home and allow patients to carry on with their lives in the way that they want to. Not only is this role improving patient experience but it is reducing hospital bed days, unnecessary readmissions and releasing clinicians to do clinical work. Read full article
The RIC Hub worked with Enfys, a psychology and occupational therapy team that work with children and young people who are looked after, adopted, and on the edge of care, to capture the lived experience of one young girl growing up in a transracial foster placement. This insightful film addresses the challenges she has experienced and showcases how those challenges can be overcome. Enfys are now using Tinesha’s story as a learning tool to inform future services and practices
The Hub has worked with Innovate Trust to showcase a pioneering Smart House in the Vale of Glamorgan. The house uses smart technology to help increase independence skills for residents who have complex needs and learning disabilities transitioning from school or college into the community.
This film tells the story of Stacey and Joanna, two inspiring people with a learning disability, who were employed by learning disability services. It highlights the benefits employing people with lived experience can have to both services and individuals.
Cardiff and Vale Regional Innovation Coordination Hub have joined up with the Fathom Trust’s Making Well Project to explore the benefits Green Prescribing can have to people’s health and wellbeing.
As part of their investment in social prescribing, the South West GP Cluster in Cardiff joined up with parkrun and the Royal College of General Practitioners to host their own parkrun Practice event, which aims to encourage people to be more active and take control of their wellbeing.
Grow Well is a community gardening project within the South West GP Cluster in Cardiff. We worked with them to showcase the benefits social prescribing can have on health and wellbeing.
Teenagers from across South Wales have begun a week-long fitness challenge to boost their wellbeing and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. See more at Teens step up for mental health – CAVRPB
The Nitrous Oxide Project has led to a huge reduction in Nitrous Oxide use in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. We worked with them to showcase their story so it can be adopted across Wales and beyond.
Cardiff and Vale Local Innovations
There are many interesting and exciting innovations being put into place across Cardiff and the Vale. This series looks at examples from across the local area reflecting the variety of approaches being taken to improve lives, health and wellbeing.
Want to create a self-sustaining and community-driven food hub in your area? Check out this inspiring innovation from the Vale of Glamorgan. Read more.
Accidental drug poisonings are a leading cause of preventable deaths among people who use opioids in the UK. We looked into the Cardiff and Vale Area Planning Board’s innovative solution. Read more.
Off-the-shelf IT solution to revolutionise obtaining patient consent. Read more.
RIC Hub Guides
To support a culture where innovation is central to service delivery, the Hub has produced a range of innovation guides that can be used to help provide your service with the information and skills needed to innovate within your service area.
Putting value at the heart of decision-making means that we need to rethink how services are delivered, adding value at every step. The Value-Based Approach is a systematic way of considering and using resources to give better outcomes for every person. Read more.
Engaging with people with lived experience can have a positive impact on the work that we do and can inform changes to services and the way we work. To do so meaningfully, it’s important to understand what works well, what the challenges and barriers might be and how to overcome them. The Hub has created a guide to give you a place to start. Read more.
Drawing upon existing resources and literature, the Hub has pulled together an easy guide to help navigate common challenges, barriers and enablers of employing people with lived experience. Read more.
A different approach to commissioning focused on collaborative working to achieve agreed outcomes. Read more.
You have a proposal you would like to develop; if asked how it will work in a strategic context, how do you answer? Read more.
Piloting is an integral part of testing innovations and demonstrating how ideas can be adapted to local conditions as part of effective spread and scaling. But what makes for a successful pilot? Read more.
Complying with legal and organisational requirements supports effective and safe innovation. Read more.
Collecting and analysing data plays a vital part in understanding service delivery and demonstrating the impact that your work is having. Harnessing the data helps to tell the story for your innovations.
Read more.
Innovating often creates or makes use of intellectual property. Understanding the creation, uses and protections such as copyright and patents will support effective innovation and adoption. Read more.
When you think of innovation a number of things might come to mind, like technology, sci-fi and Steve Jobs. You might think that innovation is done by specialists, entrepreneurs and scientists. But at its simplest, innovation is the creation and implementation of new ideas, methods, products or ways of working. Read more.
In 2021, Welsh Government announced its plan to make the circular economy in Wales a reality in the Beyond Recycling strategy. But what exactly is the circular economy, what are the benefits and enablers, and what are the challenges we might face when moving to this way of working? Read more.
Newsletters
The hub have identified common themes that span across various parts of our health and social care system and pollution groups. We’ve collated regional and national innovation activity that address these themes in order to support sharing of learning and celebrate good practice.
If the global health and care sector were a country it would be fifth largest emitter of carbon (C02e), highlighting the urgent need to develop more sustainable ways of working across the sector!
The Hub has collated a number of good practice examples, a guide to the circular economy, an update on social prescribing and information on the Bevan Commission’s Let’s Not Waste programme, to accelerate the adoption of sustainable solutions and ways of working. Read more.
Social prescribing has been recognised as having a key role to play in ensuring a sustainable health and social care system that looks after the wellbeing of the population of Wales. Read more.
Innovation can sometimes seem like a intimidating and inaccessible term, but at it’s simplest, innovation means the creation and implementation of new ideas, methods, products and ways of working. Anyone can innovate!
In this newsletter, the Hub answers the question ‘What is innovation?’ and shares the latest on smart technology and how it can be used in our health and social care system. Read more.
People with lived experience can offer a unique perspective on our health and social care services based on real experience. They can tell us first hand what it is like to experience a certain issue or service
In this newsletter, the Hub shares best practice of how services in our region have used lived experience as an asset from a variety of perspectives and provide further information to help incorporate lived experience into health and social care. Read more.
The RIC Hub has pulled together resources, regional assets and examples of local innovations to help you take your innovative ideas forward. Check it out!
In this newsletter, we’ve collated some of the great work going on in the region and beyond to move towards a more equal and inclusive health and social care system. Read Here.
Annual Reports
This report highlights just some of the work that the Regional Innovation Co-ordination Hub has delivered to drive innovation in Cardiff and the Vale in 2022/23.
RIC Hub Commissioned Reports
Social Prescribing
Social prescribing is a developing idea in Wales and further evidence is needed to better understand and optimise the services on offer. The Hub commissioned the Wales School for Social Prescribing (WSSPR) to produce a scoping review into the patient experience of social prescribing, which conceptualises the experience, barriers and outcomes of social prescribing. Additionally, the review considers the most successful ways of implementing services and barriers to access, referral mechanisms and terminology used. The review provides many insights which will be vital for developing an evidence-based social prescribing offer in Cardiff and the Vale and at a national level.
Health Technology Centre Report
The Hub commissioned the Health Technology Centre Wales to summarise the health and social care research, innovation and improvement (RII) landscape across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The report provides an evidence base for future priorities and contains a wealth of information on assets in the region which can be utilised in the drive for innovation.
Kings Fund
The Hub supported and funded the development of two reports looking at integrative and preventative approaches. These approaches are key to the sustainability and development of the health and social care system in Wales and the King’s Fund reports provide key learnings for the future direction of travel in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.
Our Team
Catherine Peel
Senior Service Improvement Programme Manager/RIC Hub Lead
I am very passionate about innovating and changing the culture of our health and social care system for the better in order to create a sustainable future. It’s important we listen to the people at the heart of our system. Everyone has a story and it is by sharing our stories that we can all learn.
Dylan John
Project Manager
I enjoy contributing to changing our health and social care system for the better, so people experience improved outcomes and get the right support at the right time in the right place. I am particularly passionate about promoting the voice of people with lived experience and the value they can have in shaping future services.
Mark Briggs
Assistant Director of Innovation
I have always been curious and spent most of my childhood making things and not too surprisingly this ended up in me pursuing a career in life sciences R&D. Having now joined the public sector I hope to make more visible direct impact and help support significant, step-wise changes in health and social care services.
If you would like to find out more about our work/get in touch/join our social prescribing network please
Case Studies
Alison Law
Improvement and Development Manager, Joint Commissioning
- Project management across the partnership to enable the alignment and joint commissioning of services, which includes shaping the market, regional commissioning strategies, contracting and quality assurance.
- Programme manager for ICF Capital fund
The RIC Hub works to support the RPB’s Starting Well, Living Well and Ageing Well partnerships’ work programmes.
Our Priorities
DECHRAU’N DDA
STARTING WELL
We want every child in Cardiff and Vale to have the opportunity to thrive. Our work focuses on children in vulnerable situations and the services that support them.
HENEIDDIO’N DDA
AGEING WELL
We know how hard it can be to find help when people need it the most. We want to make sure there is community support to help people stay as healthy as possible so they can carry on doing the things that matter most to them.
BYW’N DDA
LIVING WELL
As a Partnership we have worked together with people with a learning disability, their families, carers and the third and independent sector to produce a clear direction for the planning and delivery of adult learning disability services across the region over the next five years.