Bringing NHS voices together to drive Sciensus’ NHS improvement roadmap
When Sciensus designed its dedicated NHS digital platform, Sciensus Connect, it brought together voices from across the health service to inform its development and agree on the areas of focus.
Four years on and the team has headed out on the road to meet people in person again and discuss the issues currently facing the NHS. Debbie Goodwin, Head of NHS Service Development, explained why this face-to-face contact is so important to Sciensus and how the workshops will be used to develop innovative solutions to today’s challenges.
When Sciensus designed the Sciensus Connect portal, it was important for us to understand what people working in the NHS really needed from it. We gathered expert input through two face-to-face events with representatives from the NHS, followed by monthly online workshops looking at how we could deliver on user requirements. As a result of that collaboration, Sciensus Connect is now a market-leading and trusted platform across UK NHS trusts and health boards.
At the end of 2024, we decided to once again reach out to the NHS in a planned way to get feedback on the current challenges. We wanted to use their experiences and ideas for areas of innovation to pull together a roadmap for development priorities over the next year.
Focusing on the voice of the customer
Essentially, we designed opportunities for us to learn from the NHS customer, looking at the issues they need to address.
We held face-to-face events in London, Burton, Belfast, Edinburgh, Bristol, Featherstone, and Paddington. These ran from February to April 2025 and we were joined by 84 NHS colleagues. We had a clear focus on listening to their opinions on the challenges in the NHS and the potential for solutions.
The event format included break out groups that we then brought together to discuss topics such as capacity and constraints, and to vote on the top challenges and what matters most to the NHS. We sent out a survey after each event to check on whether the format was working for the attendees and we tweaked our arrangements as needed based on that feedback.
Prioritising the challenges
Discussions at the events revealed a wide-ranging catalogue of challenges.
We’ve been analysing the data to come up with a shortlist of priorities and are inviting the NHS to vote on the top areas for our innovation focus over the next year. We’ve designed the system so that we can look at the votes both nationally but also by geographic area, so that any specific local issues aren’t subsumed in the wider vote.
The work is now ongoing as we didn’t go to the attendees with predetermined suggestions for improvements, we simply focused on the issues. Those who have taken part will be invited to work with us moving forwards as we develop solutions through a number of dedicated workstreams.
The value of having people in the room
Not only did Sciensus benefit from the discussions in the event rooms, the feedback we received revealed that many attendees also valued on opportunity to work together with colleagues they wouldn’t usually get the chance to link with. We managed to bring together people from across different organisations but also from a wide range of roles and it was so useful for us to listen and learn.
We will be keeping up our engagement with the NHS over the year and beyond as we look to constantly improve and innovate.
About Sciensus
Sciensus is a proven life sciences solutions partner with more than 30 years’ experience in navigating and unlocking the complex European healthcare ecosystem to maximise patient reach. We help accelerate the development journey, bringing medicines into the market and directly to patients to improve health outcomes. Through cutting-edge patient engagement programmes, offering an exclusive combination of skilled in-person care and digital support, we help patients make the most of their treatment and generate real-world evidence that can be used to improve treatment pathways.