The Centre for Implementation Science is home to a team of expert implementation and improvement science researchers, including health economists and statisticians. This team are investigating how best to help ‘implement’ evidence-based practice and clinical research within health services in south London, nationally and internationally.
As part of this work, the team studies the role of healthcare professionals, managers, commissioners of health services and policymakers as well as organisational structures and processes to try to understand why health services don’t always offer the safest, most effective treatments and ways of working. They also study which circumstances make it easier for research results to be adopted. The Centre for Implementation Science was established in 2014 and became operational in 2015, and is led by Professor Nick Sevdalis, Professor of Implementation Science and Patient Safety at King’s College London. The Centre for Implementation Science also aims to develop the discipline of implementation science and it’s researchers support the capacity building work of NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London.
Within the Centre, there are four research themes:
Global health research
The Centre’s scientists have a very active portfolio of studies in low and middle income countries, investigating implementation, uptake and sustainability of numerous evidenced mental and physical healthcare service delivery and improvement interventions.
Methodology research
Jointly with King’s Health Economics and the Department of Biostatistics and Health Informatics, the Centre’s scientists are developing novel methodologies for the conduct of implementation research in health and social care settings – with a primary focus on hybrid effectiveness-implementations methods and associated assessment instruments.
Public mental health research
The Centre’s scientists lead the evaluation of public mental health programmes, working with the Mental Health Policy Research Unit, and have a portfolio of studies in mental health services research.
Improvement research
The Centre views improvement science as complementary to implementation science – and has an active portfolio of funded studies to advance our understanding of healthcare improvement processes in South London, within the wider UK, NHS and globally.