NHS to merge corporate university into an Innovation Centre

The health service's corporate university NHSU is to be merged into a new NHS Institute for Learning, Skills and Innovation.

The move comes as part of health secretary John Reid's review of the Department of Health's Arm's Length Bodies (ALBs), which aims to improve efficiency in the NHS by cutting the number of ALBs by 50 per cent, saving £500m by 2007-08.

Computing revealed earlier this year that NHSU had cancelled a major elearning procurement project designed to support online training for many of the NHS's 1.2 million staff(Computing, 5 August).

'NHSU has been fully operational for only a year, and the reasons for setting it up, the objectives it set itself and the ways of working it espoused still hold and are still important,' said NHSU's chair Barbara Stephens.

The Institute of Learning, Skills and Innovation will also combine the NHS Modernisation Agency to promote excellence across the health service and manage its forthcoming Innovation Centre.

'By improving efficiency and cutting bureaucracy in arms length bodies, this government is reducing the administrative burden on frontline NHS staff while freeing up extra resources for services for NHS patients,' said Reid.