About this Research Topic

Background

Current approaches to health, scientific and policy innovation are undergoing a metamorphosis accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has resulted in a more inclusive process fostering effective change to support the need for enhanced, systematic, and opportunity-driven access to talent, leading to effective problem-solving and innovative thinking. In many globally developed and emerging diasporas, there has been a much-needed mindset shift towards empowering such innovative thinking through either creating newer platforms or evolving archaic digital infrastructures to support a dynamically agile society. Circumstantially, such a challenge made it necessary to meet the current societal needs for mission critical health services (including public health and health promotion) provision and organizational management.

The European Programme of Work 2020-2025 “United Action for Better Health in Europe” and the Sustainable Development Goals place an emphasis on achieving Universal Health Coverage by ensuring that the provided health services are of enough quality to be safe, effective, and accessible. Positive health and well-being outcomes as well as the sustainability of health systems can only be achieved with a robust value-based approach that is carefully planned, implemented, and evaluated. In this context, in 2021, the WHO Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office organized in December 2021 the first “Meeting of the Minds” Conference on Quality of Care.

The “Meeting of the Minds” resulted in the sharing, discussion, and presentation of a group of applied, culture-appropriate good practices based on Member States’ responses at a national, regional, and local or facility level during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond in relation to the quality of care and patient safety issues.

By organizing the first “Meeting of the Minds”, the WHO Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office aimed to elicit the main elements of a roadmap for the implementation of essential actions, to move forward on each one of the five thematic areas that form the focus of the 2021 meeting. These are:

1) Presenting innovation, cutting-edge tools and good practices in the fields of quality of care and patient safety including digital health services, as enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics.

2) Identifying essential actions to foster partnerships, stakeholders’ engagement, and the establishment of supportive collaboration and mutual learning networks in the area of quality of care.

3) Sharing Member States’ experiences with regard to healthcare services’ response during the COVID-19 pandemic related to the quality of care and patient safety.

4) Bringing the patient perspective of quality to the frontline and enhancing patient-informed involvement and shared decision-making in healthcare.

5) Stimulating a new era in the development, implementation and evaluation of evidence-based national quality of care plans incorporating preconditions and limitations, clinical governance, and incubating innovative quality management tools.

Such case studies shall form the basis of the hereby presented Frontiers of Health Services Special Issue.

In 2022 the collaborating trinity of Frontiers, the WHO/Europe Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office and the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London decided to join forces showcasing innovation through building a platform that will elicit cutting-edge tools enhanced by SARS-COV-2 pandemic needs, through the launch of the hereby presented research topic.

The scope for authors is to submit topical research and policy work linked to innovative approaches that aim to solve loco-regional, national, and global challenges on quality of care identified during COVID and translated for after COVID.

We are looking for success stories, case studies, qualitative and quantitative research work submitted and developed at a loco-regional and facility innovation level, which should be indicated as such and will be scrutinized by editors. This work will be deemed high quality and selected if authors can prove that it carries the quintessential innovation-characteristic DNA that makes it transferable to the regional and state level and hence enable applications beyond their immediate circle of creation. It must be demonstrated how such innovation can garner significant investment through strategic partnerships or how it has (or could) stimulate interdisciplinary and cross-border collaboration during its evolution.

In addition to the above, for work submitted and performed at a regional level, authors must also show how their work impacts the provision of national services and how it creates opportunities for the development of newer services, affects the creation of newer guidance, and supports effective inter-organizational policy and decision making.

At a national level, authors must show how their work either carries or has the potential to be scaled-up and be wider-reaching with global implementations that help solve significant challenges that plague healthcare and society. Authors are expected to show how they intend to lower the barrier to the usability of their proposed tool/innovation or how they have developed and implemented necessary methods to make it easier to achieve a more global use-case.

Hutan Ashrafian is Chief Scientific Officer of Preemptive Health at Flagship Pioneering.

Lord Ara Darzi is the Chairman of Preemptive Medicine at Flagship Pioneering, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and Chair of Imperial College Health Partners.

Keywords: Sustainable Development, World Health Organisation, Quality of Care, SARS-Cov-2 Pandemic, Medical and Surgical Innovation, Institute of Global Health Innovation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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