King's Health Partners celebrates 10 years

23 May 2019

On Thursday 16 May, King’s Health Partners held our Annual Conference and marked 10 years of being an Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC).

We celebrated the multitude of ways that we’re combining excellence in education, research and clinical care to improve people’s health outcomes and experience.

Check out the Annual Conference brochure for details on the talks and speakers we had on the day. In the document you’ll find 10 impactful stats about us and an interactive timeline of highlights over the last year.

Our Annual Conference kicked off with an introduction about King’s Health Partners and reflections on 10 years of impact from Prof Sir Robert Lechler, followed by a 7x7 impact series - seven, seven-minute talks on translational research which is making a difference to patient care across King’s Health Partners. We heard from top researchers including:

Professor Sally Barrington on how positron emission tomography/computerised tomography (PET/CT) can be used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma
Professor Sir John Strang on using heroin antidote naloxone without the needle
Prof Andrew Tutt on the first targeted treatment for hereditary cancer
Professor Philip McGuire on uncovering the link between cannabis and psychosis
Professor Lucy Chappell on changing antenatal care with pre-eclampsia research
Professor Reza Razavi on advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided electrophysiology, and
Professor Sir Robert Lechler on transplantation tolerance: adoptive T Cell therapy.

We have filmed a vox pop series which summarises each of the speaker’s talks, due to be published in the next few weeks – keep your eyes peeled!

Our keynote speakers Prof Yvonne Doyle CB and Rt Hon Prof Lord Kakkar gave excellent talks on the impact and contributions of AHSCs on the long-term sustainability of healthcare, prevention, and the role of AHSC’s in delivering the government’s life sciences strategy and NHS Long Term Plan respectively.

We summed up our live tweets and posts from others about what they thought of the day into a moment. Read it here.

To mark King’s Health Partners 10^th birthday, colleagues across our partnership signed our birthday card – read their messages. You can also wish us Happy Birthday on Twitter tagging in @kingshealth and using the hashtag #KHP10Years.

[Image: our partners sent us some lovely messages on Twitter, click on the image to read the full messages]

Professor Sir Robert Lechler, Executive Director of King’s Health Partners, said:

Since coming together in 2009, our partnership has sought to combine our collective strength in research, education and clinical care to improve health and wellbeing, locally and globally.

The range of high-quality, impactful talks and workshops at our Annual Conference is a sign that we are well on our way to achieving this aim. A huge thank you to all our speakers and attendees - I look forward to seeing what more we will achieve in the next 10 years.

King’s Health Partners also received messages from Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England, and Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health and Social Care.

I congratulate Kings Health Partners on their 10^th anniversary as a Department of Health and Social Care Academic Health Science Centre. Significant progress to align the NHS and academic partners has seen a transformation of health and care delivery in South East London. Over the years, the establishment of the clinical academic groups has underpinned substantial research funding investments, enabling the engine of world-class excellence in health research to be coupled with academic expertise in medical education and training. Through this strategic alignment of the partners, real progress has been made and the AHSC is working across all its programmes to get the best outcomes for the local population.

Professor Chris Whitty - Chief Scientific Adviser, Department of Health and Social Care

I am a strong advocate of Academic Health Science Centres – bringing together the NHS, National Institute for Health Research, Biomedical Research Centres and universities helps us get the best research for patients.

The best research in the world is of limited value unless you can put it into practice. This type of partnership brings together the brightest minds to offer patients the very best care and treatment, based on quality evidence. The world looks on in envy at the collaboration achieved at King’s Health Partners – congratulations on your 10-year anniversary and I look forward to seeing even more success going forward.