[Ed. note: Here you’ll find hopefully accessible definitions of terms I use a lot in my work. If you have any suggestions for additional terms that should be added, let me know!]
CLAHRCs
Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care. Programmes of work, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, which focus on working in partnership with the NHS, to conduct research that is meaningful to NHS stakeholders ( patients, health professionals, commissioners, managers, policy makers…). I work for the Greater Manchester CLAHRC. Also notable for every CLAHRC director I’ve ever heard insisting “I didn’t choose the acronym”. To this day, blame lies unattributed. #justiceforbadresearchacronyms.
Codesign
Actively involving all stakeholders to collaboratively design new services that focus on the needs and experiences of the service users. In health, that means patients themselves, and health professionals, are all involved.In my fellowship, I want to use methods from service design and ux (user experience) design to help us make better use of health data to improve heathcare.
Health Informatics
Simply, the management and use of data (information) about health. More complicated, the use of such health data to improve health care itself. Learning Health Systems (see below) aim to make routine use of health data to implement improvements in care, and so require input both from health informatics and from implementation science (also below).
Implementation science
Implementation means putting things into action, taking effect. Implementation science is the study how get research into action. To quote from the experts, it is “the scientific study of methods to promote the uptake of research findings into routine healthcare in clinical, organisational or policy contexts.”
Knowledge Mobilisation
The activity of moving knowledge into use. In health research, that knowledge is evidence about what works or learning from research studies. KMb (as it’s shortened to) is therefore interlinked with Implementation – both are about making sure research is used in practice and has impact beyond looking pretty in a journal paper. Other terms like knowledge translation and knowledge exchange are largely interchangeable, and you may see the whole lot shortened to K* to cover everything. KMb has the advantage of enabling you to shout “All aboard the knowledge mobile!”, thus becoming the coolest kid on the block.
Learning Health System
The aim of a Learning Health System is to learn from all the data that is collected in health services and to feed findings back to make continuous improvements. To achieve this, the system needs to be “sociotechnical” – it requires a technical IT infrastructure to gather data, but also a social culture of learning and improvement, and the engagement of professionals and patients in identifying and delivering improvements. A more detailed overview of what an LHS is and what it requires is provided by the Learning Healthcare Project here. Fundamentally a Learning Health System is about linking learning (through data) to action (through health improvement) , which makes it a perfect Knowledge Mobilisation problem.
Data, patients, action! 