4 December 2025

In a rapidly changing environment, how can King's Health Partners continue to build momentum and truly harness our strengths to support the delivery of the NHS 10-year Plan and Life Sciences Growth Plan? 

As 2025 draws to a close, senior leaders from the four founding KHP partners reflect on a year that saw the launch of the KHP Strategy to 2030, and share priorities for the year ahead.

We also hear from Prof Graham Lord, Executive Director at KHP, on harnessing the partnership's collective strength to foster inclusive innovation in south London. 

Jane Bailey, Chair, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust: 

“KHP is a unique research and educational partnership. It means that as we develop our new Trust strategy, we are well-placed to deliver high quality, evidence-based services - and develop new evidence to continually improve the delivery of care. 

“Mental health is complex and is affected by multiple factors including physical health, income, housing, environment, and education. Working in partnership - with the additional insight it brings - helps us design services and interventions across the system that consider the whole person. 

“Our challenge is to ensure staff are best equipped to deliver that care. We need a partnership delivering the best education, training, and knowledge-sharing in mind and body care – for example through the Mind & Body Improvement Network. We have a commitment to meaningful engagement, robust evidence, evaluation, and continuous improvement in mind and body care that can lead to impact at scale. The recent announcement that the PEACS programme has been awarded a £1million grant to scale chronic pain support nationally is hopefully the first of many.” 

Prof Clive Kay, Chief Executive of King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust:

“Our new Trust strategy will set out how we will meet the rising demand for high quality, timely, and efficient patient care in a changing world. 

“King’s Health Partners, with our strengths in technology and digital, will help us find new solutions and different ways of delivering care. 

“To keep up with the speed of change, we must connect with and learn from the latest innovations coming from higher education institutions. There are tools, apps, and digital interventions that can have an impact on an individual and on a population level. The research and analytical expertise of King’s College London, combined with the wealth of healthcare data across the partnership, offers a unique ecosystem and opportunities for the acceleration of digital health technologies.

“We also need to ensure the healthcare professionals of the future are equipped with the skills they need to respond to changing patient activity and expectations. Embracing this change means developing our teams and creating a Trust that is an inspiring place to work.”

Prof Shitj Kapur, Vice-Chancellor & President, King's College London: 

“King's substantial strengths in health research, education, and impact are enhanced by the partnership of King’s Health Partners. Together, KHP Trusts are the largest provider of placements for our clinical taught courses - their staff teach our students, and our joint world-class health research informs our curricula. 

“It is a national priority to speed up clinical trial initiation and recruitment to ensure that discoveries reach people faster. We are well-placed to meet this challenge. Through shared infrastructure – including the King’s Clinical Academic Training Office and the Joint Research Offices – we can build capacity and streamline processes across organisations. With more than 4.2million patient contacts per year across our partnership, we can offer an unrivalled ecosystem for industry and other funders. 

“The benefits of research-active NHS trusts include better health outcomes for our diverse patients and communities as well as improved staff retention due to enhanced career opportunities. Both King’s College London and Trust staff have access to a breadth of internal KHP offers – such as the KHP Learning Hub and KHP Digital Health Hub, and international courses and partnerships.” 

Amanda Pritchard, Chief Executive, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust: 

"The NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England commits us to three strategic shifts, meaning treatment patterns and treatment locations are going to change. 

“As we begin our role as a pilot site for the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme, through KHP we can collect and share comprehensive detail that deepens understanding of our population’s physical and mental health, the burden of disease, and how environment impacts wellbeing. This generates the evidence for preventative health interventions which will improve outcomes for those affected by the greatest disease burdens, particularly underrepresented communities. 

“We want our clinical staff to be at the forefront of this research-driven culture. We know an academic component to clinical roles enhances staff satisfaction, recruitment, and retention. By attracting and keeping the best and brightest, we will deliver the consistent, high quality care that our patients and communities expect.” 

Prof Graham Lord, Executive Director, King’s Health Partners 

“Our challenge extends beyond the care we provide within hospital walls. We must think about how healthcare, and where it is delivered, enables people to live, work, and thrive in their communities. Our contribution should enable people to exist well in wider society.  

“Since launching in 2009, KHP has grown and matured as a partnership. We know that cities with strong academic, clinical, and industry ecosystems consistently excel in health and economic outcomes. Now is the time to use our collective strengths and our prime central location to look at how we extend our reach to foster inclusive innovation. We have an opportunity to bring partners and others within the wider ecosystem together to focus our collective life sciences efforts on developing new ideas, technologies, and services that benefit residents.   

“By aligning national policy incentives with local action, we can embed research, education, and innovation at the heart of health and care - building a resilient, high-impact system fit for the future.” 

Read the KHP Strategy to 2030.