You should by now have seen the first issue of our magazine Translate. The title is appropriate in more ways than one. Of course, one of our obvious aims of becoming an Academic Health Sciences Centre is to accelerate the process of translating discovery into patient benefit. Indeed, our overall success will be judged according to how good we are in this regard. However, we also need to address how we translate our bold ambitions into reality.

We have talked extensively about our structures, our governance, and our aims. This has been very positive and has engaged many staff from a range of professional groups. However, it is now time to realise some of the “added value” that this upheaval is designed to create.

The challenge that I hope everyone in King’s Health Partners will embrace is to determine how, in every sphere of activity and influence, we can do things better. There are numerous ways in which this may be achieved. One example would be where colleagues from one or more of the partner organisations join together to create service subspecialisations, recruitment of new talent, or clinical investigation on larger numbers of patients. Another example might be consortia bids from across the partnership for infrastructure, attracting more clinical trainees into research laboratories, and linking basic scientists to clinical groups, so that productive collaborations can be forged. Whatever way you look at it, innovation will be the product of fresh and creative thinking that insists on challenging our conventional ways of working.

Given the enormous range of talent that King’s Health Partners is fortunate to possess, we must aim high. I have heard from numerous sources that we are regarded as the most ambitious of the five accredited Academic Health Sciences Centres; we are being watched – it’s time to deliver!