Improvement Lab

Q Lab provides a range of innovation processes and brings people together to tackle complex challenges in health and care services. 

It’s a scalable approach that enables faster, more sustainable improvement. We tailor the timeline, structure and methods to each individual project.

Through our Lab we:

• Build partnerships and convene stakeholders across organisational, professional and geographic boundaries.
• Provide spaces for reflective learning and sense-making, helping lab participants to understand the problem and the system they are operating within.
• Support teams to creatively design solutions, experiment, learn and implement ideas in a supportive environment.
• Distil and communicate insights to enable changes in practice. 

Contact us about our services

Between August 2023 and May 2024, Q Lab explored how we could create collective responsibility to reduce delays in elective pathways. We helped teams across organisations take shared responsibility for solving system‑wide problems.

The Lab helped teams:

• Build stronger relationships and collaborate across boundaries.
• Gain confidence to tackle complex system challenges.
• Refresh and apply their skills in a new environment.
• Strengthen understanding of equity and whole‑system thinking.

The Lab model changed how these organisations delivered improvement work, making it easier to share learning and strengthening patient involvement.

• Aneurin Bevan reduced delays from time to diagnosis of head and neck cancer, to decision to treat, from 62 to 28 days.
• South Docs Services moved urology care from secondary to primary care, with 90% of patients not needing to attend secondary hospital care.
• UCLH reduced young people’s monthly clinic non-attendance rates by 33%.
• Stockport reduced perioperative pain clinic waiting times from 8 months to 23 days.