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About the Q Lab

Q Lab brings people together to tackle complex issues in health and care across the UK. We combine perspectives to create scalable, sustainable and systemic improvements from the ground up.

Q Lab brings people together to tackle complex issues in health and care across the UK. We combine perspectives to create scalable, sustainable and systemic improvements from the ground up.

Q Lab

Q Lab uses creative and collaborative approaches to bring people together, understand what is known about a topic, uncover new insights and develop and test ideas.

Q Lab Cymru

Launched in July 2021, Q Lab Cymru is an initiative to improve health and care for people in Wales. It is a partnership between Improvement Cymru, the all-Wales Improvement service for NHS Wales and Q. Q Lab Cymru receives funding from the Health Foundation, an independent charitable organisation working to build a healthier UK.

How we work

  • Collaboratively: The Lab works across geographical, organisational and professional boundaries to bring together a diverse set of people with relevant experience and expertise.
  • Drawing on a range of approaches and tools: Using approaches from quality improvement, and disciplines such as social innovation and design, means that we use methods that are best suited to the outcome that we are trying to achieve.
  • Developing skills and connections: Through accessing new information, methods and connections, Lab participants are well equipped to not only apply learning from the Lab process, but use those skills in other complex challenges they encounter.
  • At pace: Although the challenges that the Lab focuses on are complex, we work at pace and build up momentum for change.
  • Thinking about scale from the outset: We draw on principles from the latest research about how ideas can be best shared, adapted and adopted and design those approaches into our ways of working.

Read What is the Q  Lab?

What we seek to achieve

Q Lab seeks to enable change by:

  • developing a deep and rounded understanding of key challenges and opportunities in a topic area
  • generating ideas with potential to catalyse improvement
  • equipping people with enhanced understanding, skills and connections to translate ideas into action
  • sharing ideas widely, nationally and locally.

Read Impact that counts

Q Lab projects

Peer support available to all

Q Lab workshopFrom April 2017 to May 2018, Q Lab worked with almost 200 Lab participants to explore what it would take for peer support to more widely available to those who needed it, to support their long-term health and wellbeing needs.

Our work together produced new insights, projects and a growing community of people interested in peer support.

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Mental health problems and persistent pain

Lab research sessions October 2018From September 2018, Q Lab worked in partnership with Mind, the mental health charity. Our work together focused on supporting people living with both a mental health problem and long-term physical condition, specifically looking at the experiences of people living with both mental health problems and persistent back and neck pain, and how care can be designed to best meet their health and wellbeing needs.

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Technology-enabled remote monitoring

Lab participants at a workshop

From November 2021, Q Lab worked on our third project. With the NHS, in partnership for digital health and care, we explored how to build staff and patient trust and confidence in technology-enabled remote monitoring, so that it can be scaled across the health and care system. Between November 2021 – May 2022 we held six workshops as part of the Q Lab design process and supported test teams with funding into 2023.

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Reducing waits in elective care

In 2023 Q Lab worked on our fourth project exploring how we might create collective responsibility to reduce delays in elective pathways. We are supporting six test teams to develop and test promising ideas to tackle this challenge.

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