Our dedicated focus on implementation planning has enhanced the uptake and impact of ARC projects. Through a joint leadership role with Health Innovation Wessex, and close working with our partners, including Wessex Health Partners, our ICSs, health and care providers and our higher education partners, researchers have been supported to foster connections and networking critical to implementation success. Stakeholders (such as clinicians and commissioners) have been engaged early in the research cycle to understand the factors that will support the adoption of research. 

 

Our implementation team provided an implementation advice, co-developed implementation plans and advised on grant applications. An implementation checklist was developed to assist researchers in planning for implementation at the outset of their projects 

Other resources | NIHR ARC Wessex. 

 

Our partnership with Health Innovation Wessex has benefitted understanding of how to optimise the impact of ARC innovations and research findings , and has led to several joint programmes of work including research in optimising the use of medicines , the Wessex NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme (NIPP), a review of the evidence for community based falls prevention, and development of a Workforce Evaluation Toolkit. 

 

Our medicines optimisation programme was founded on a deep understanding of system priorities, resulting in research questions that addressed system priorities and successful implementation of the findings and new resources.

 

Our evaluations of  digital remote monitoring for people with frailty in Wessex, and our joint evidence review of community based falls prevention in England with ARC South West Peninsula, provided insights into the implementation of innovation in practice and have been widely disseminated. Our policy brief on falls prevention, published in 2025, describes lessons for implementation from several ARC implementation studies of falls prevention programmes to benefit commissioners, providers and the public. Ageing, dementia & frailty priority | NIHR ARC Wessex. And in response to an expressed need from our system partners for help with evaluating change in the workplace, we produced an evaluation framework and toolkit to guide what to evaluate, how to ask evaluation questions and ways to measure change (In development).

 

In October 2024, we launched our knowledge mobilisation programme and recruited a team of four knowledge mobilisation fellows, enabling us to develop expertise in this area and amplify awareness of the importance of knowledge mobilisation for research impact. 

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