Past projects
The North West London Evaluation Toolkit
Client: North West London Integrated Care Board
Brief: Creating a standard and easy to use evaluation framework to support NHS staff to conduct more, higher-quality evaluations
Audiences: NHS health professionals, programme managers and senior NHS leaders
Description and results: In her role as innovation lead at Imperial College Health Partners, Joana led the development of an evaluation toolkit with several stages of user testing with step-by-step guidance for NHS professionals wanting to evaluate the impact of their health interventions. This was accompanied by the creation of a consortium with NHS providers, academic institutions and voluntary sector organisations to create the right governance, leadership endorsement and enablement for behaviour change. The toolkit is now live since March 2025 with 100 people attending the launch event, and we developed metrics to track the reach and impact of the toolkit after launch.
Evaluation of Open Age digital inclusion pilot
Client: NHS Charities Together / Open Age
Brief: Imperial College Health Partners were commissioned by NHS Charities Together to evaluate three digital inclusion pilots, including one pilot from Open Age (DigitALL) on training older adults (including some with English as a Second Language) to use digital devices to achieve personal goals
Audiences: NHS Charities Together (funder); Open Age Board
Description and results: While at ICHP, Joana led an evaluation process alongside the delivery of the Open Age DigitALL pilot, including creating a logic model to articulate impact, setting up Data Processing Agreements and data collection tools, analysing qualitative and quantitative data and producing a final report showing the key impacts and costs of the pilot and enablers and barriers to project sustainability. This evaluation was considered an exemplar by NHS Charities Together.
Link: http://imperialcollegehealthpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DigitALL-Year-2_FINAL.pdf
Innovation reviews for NWL Acute Strategy
Client: North West London Integrated Care Board
Brief: The NWL Integrated Care Board commissioned Imperial College Health Partners to support the development of their Acute Strategy for the region in 2021, including the delivery of innovation reviews for 4 representative specialities (Paediatrics, Neurology, Gynaecology and Respiratory)
Audiences: Integrated Care Board senior leadership
Description and results: While at ICHP, Joana developed a process to deliver these innovation reviews based on the Double Diamond approach (pictured). Led the delivery of innovation reviews for Gynaecology and Paediatrics specialities, which included: facilitating workshops with clinical reference groups to define the problems affecting their specialities and prioritise them; conducting innovation scans to identify suitable innovations and rank their suitability for implementation; and supporting clinical leaders to select an innovation to implement
Fractional COO for Ed-Tech CIC
Client: Education Technology CIC
Brief: Engaged as Fractional COO to strengthen operational foundations and improve the organisation's ability to track and demonstrate its impact.
Audiences: Senior leadership and Board
Description and results: Structured and implemented pipeline management processes and monitoring frameworks to give leadership clearer visibility of organisational activity. Upgraded data visualisation capabilities to make performance data more accessible and actionable across the team. Currently leading a project to link operational data to outcome measures, enabling the organisation to better evidence its social impact and support future funding and growth.
UK Local Authority
Client: Local Authority
Brief: Commissioned to redesign discharge and reablement processes to increase capacity and reduce long-term dependency on care packages across the population.
Audiences: Local authority senior leadership and frontline service teams
Description and results: Set up patient pathway data capture and governance structures to enable short interval control across discharge and reablement services. Led a multidisciplinary team to redesign processes end-to-end, resulting in £2.7M in measurable benefit to the local authority, with 600 people impacted per year through improved care pathways and reduced need for ongoing packages of care.
Building a demand model for North West London Acute Strategy
Client: North West London Integrated Care Board (while at ICHP)
Brief: The NWL Integrated Care Board commissioned Imperial College Health Partners to support the development of their Acute Strategy for the region in 2021, including the development of a demand forecast model to understand future demand for care.
Audiences: Integrated Care Board senior leadership
Description and results: While at ICHP, Joana led the development of a quantitative Excel model to forecast future demand for acute care in the region. This involved defining key features and use cases for the model, identifying suitable data sources, mapping data flows and designing and building a model integrating activity data from inpatient, outpatient, theatres and A&E settings. Reported fortnightly to steering group with BI/ops leads for the four acute trusts to test model outputs iteratively and resolve data availability and quality challenges.