Clinical Excellence 2004 took place at the ICC in Birmingham between 30th November and 2 December. The conference was a great success with around 1100 delegates listening to over 130 speakers through out the three day event including the Rt Hon John Reid MP who addressed the audience on Wednesday morning.
The first day of the event focused on increasing certainty through research. Professor Sally Davis, Director of Research and Development at the Department of Health, spoke about the new R&D agenda for the NHS and how it will focus on such topics as relevance to patients, improving health and partnerships between funders, service, academic disciplines, industry, patients, carers and communities.
The next two days focus followed the Department of Health’s 7 new standards for the NHS, outlined in the recent document “Standards for Better Health”. Session themes included getting governance right, clinical and cost effectiveness, achieving quality in public health, and patient safety and clinical risk.
One of the hot topics at this year’s conference was support for and the monitoring of implementation of NICE guidance. Dr Gillian Leng, the Institute’s Implementation Systems Director chaired 3 sessions on implementation, including a presentation by the winners of the HSJ Award for implementing NICE guidance. Other speakers presented their successes in implementing NICE guidelines on head injury and pressure ulcer prevention. Anna Walker Chief Executive of the Healthcare Commission outlined the Commission’s plans for monitoring the Implementation of NICE guidance as part of their new inspection process.
A key aim of the conference is to give delegates the opportunity to share best practice. The programme this year included numerous examples of local projects that have improved service provision and patient care, including sessions on achieving excellence in clinical risk management, service user led services in mental health, and choice as a driver for quality. To complement these sessions, around 100 posters were on display describing a range of local and national quality improvement projects.
Once again the exhibition was very popular with delegates, who took the opportunity to visit the 97 stands which makes Clinical Excellence one of the biggest NHS exhibitions.
At the end of a long day of learning, delegates also had the opportunity for a little exercise with fitball fun and pilates, and of course by dancing the night away at the conference dinner and disco (rumoured to be the best NICE conference party so far!).
For those who were unable to attend the conference, and delegates who what to refresh their memory NICE will be producing a publication in early 2005 with a collection of papers from speakers at the conference. This will be sent to all delegates and will be available to others from Radcliffe Medical Press or on this page on our website.
Next years conference will take place at the ICC in Birmingham between 6th and 8th December 2005. The conference programme will be available from July. Please visit the conference pages on the NICE website for an update on what is happening next year www.nice.org.uk/conference05.
