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Exchange

Activating ideas together through Q's funding programme.

Have you got a great idea that you’d like to get £40,000 of funding for?

Q Exchange offers Q members the chance to develop project ideas and submit bids for up to £40,000 of funding.

For Q Exchange in 2024, we have £800,000 of funding for the programme. It is delivered by Q and jointly funded by the Health Foundation and NHS England.

Our collaborative online process supports you to refine and develop your project ideas with the help of the Q community.

The theme for Q Exchange this year is:

How can we improve across system boundaries?​

We are looking for proposals that involve two or more parts of the health and care system and focus on improving the quality and efficiency of the interface between different sectors. For example, care at home, primary care and the community sector.

Projects should relate to one or more of the following areas:​

  • Reducing waits sustainably and equitably​.
  • Increasing productivity and reducing waste.​
  • Boosting the culture, capabilities and structures needed for learning and improvement.
  • Embedding improvement into management systems and processes​.

We are looking for projects with potential for insights or interventions that are scalable. We expect proposals to show proactive links to local or national priorities and structures, as well as making active use of the Q community.

Improving productivity is an especially difficult but pressing challenge for the sector. Connecting your ideas to the holistic benefits you can achieve and showing the potential to inspire productivity gains alongside other objectives will be important to sustaining and spreading the work.

Project teams must be led by a Q member for the duration of the project but can involve people who are not yet part of the community.

In May 2024, we will announce the 30 shortlisted projects. Q members will then vote to choose the projects you want to see funded. We will announce the successful projects in July 2024.

Proposals are now being considered by the shortlisting panels. The shortlisted ideas that will go forward to the Q community vote will be announced on Wednesday 15 May 2024.

£800,000 total funding available jointly from the Health Foundation and NHS England, it offers Q members the chance to develop project ideas and submit bids for up to £40,000 of funding

30 teams with collaboratively developed ideas, shortlisted for the Q community online vote

Q community members will vote online to decide which projects will receive funding

The Big Idea

Q Exchange aims to activate the knowledge of improvement experts across the UK; to create links between those leading work and those who can help champion, support, adopt these ideas; and to boost ideas that have the best potential to generate value for the health and care system

Collective wisdom

Involve people who understand improvement to develop and select projects. Support all involved to learn from evidence, emerging ideas, and each other

Community

Create links between those leading work and others who champion, support, and help adopt it

Impact

Boost ideas judged to have the best potential to generate insight and value for patients, staff, and the health and care system

The Timeline

  1. Calendar icon: FEB - 2024FEB2024

    Idea generation

    Upload your Q Exchange idea from 6 February 2024 and start to develop your idea with the support of the Q community.

  2. Calendar icon: MAR - 2024MAR2024

    Refine your idea

    Convert your idea into a proposal on the website by 12.00 on Wednesday 20 March 2024 for it to be considered by the shortlisting panels.

  3. Calendar icon: MAY - 2024MAY2024

    Shortlisting

    Shortlisting panels will assess proposals and select up to 30 projects to go forward to the vote. Shortlisted projects will be announced 15 May 2024.

  4. Calendar icon: MAY - 2024MAY2024

    Community vote

    Q members will vote online to decide which projects will receive funding. Winners will be announced in July 2024.

View the full timeline

Latest activity

  • Guest
    Whilst working for  the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation programme (MNSI)  (formally HSIB), I have seen the value of  doing system focused investigations for families, trusts and the wider NHS. This proposal sounds well timed and over due;  Will look forward to seeing the impact of this proposal.
  • Thanks Helen for the taking the time to provide your comments.  Through this project we would hope to change culture around bereavement care opening up communication about the loss and access support when needed as early as possible but also to support normal grieving process.  The workshop aims to normalise but also validate the young persons experiences.  As it is done in a single session format it means it is accessible at times when needed as young people can attend once or more as needed.  We would hope to train up professionals to run the workshop, increasing the capacity resource across systems to ensure there is an increase in access to supports across the trust.
  • Likewise - love your Canal project proposal and so exciting we're both growing and continuing the work of Powering Up! https://q.health.org.uk/idea/2023/powering-up-co-producing-solutions-to-health-inequality-with-young-people/ Have heard the schools presentation was brilliant last week and definitely keen to keep working together and learning from you :)
  • Thanks Iain. Absolutely still looking for support from across Q. I'd be really keen to learn from your great work around the QI and Lean MOOCs, for example.
  • Thank you for your comment Louisa. We have already reached out to Flourish and plan to be guided by service user groups to identify which groups we can engage with and would see the most benefit from. We have existing partnerships with SACHMA and the Pakistan Muslim Centre and plan to reach out to them to discuss how we can help to address the inequalities in those communities, which we already know exist from previous data. We would like to build a relationship with Say It too. We have considered approaching this via our Rainbow Staff Network as they already have a connection. As for 16/17 year olds, that is an excellent question that unfortunately I don't have an answer for. The PDU is not commissioned for 16/17 year olds though we do know that age group attend the adult A&E for emergency care only, but the secondary mental health is not provided by SHSC but by CAMHS which is under SCH. It is something that would be interesting to look at moving forward but I do not have an answer for you as yet.
  • Great idea, and key message of 200mins really help frontline perspectives on what you're trying to achieve.   Looking forward to seeing this develop, and spread across boundaries!
  • Thanks Joanne. We'd love to work with you on this. Reach out to discuss further. All the best, Jonathan

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