Academic Health Science Centre
An Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC) is a partnership between a healthcare provider and a university, a partnership that has been proven to be effective in several countries worldwide.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust was created in October 2007, by merging Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary's NHS Trust. The new Trust and Imperial College London then formed a unique partnership and together they formed the UK's first AHSC. In March 2009, we received official recognition as an AHSC from the UK government.

The AHSC is currently being extended to form an Academic Health Science System (AHSS), and the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust became the first associate member in June 2010.

Vision
The vision for our academic health science centre (AHSC) is that the quality of life of our patients and local populations will be vastly improved by taking the discoveries that we make and translating them into medical advances - new therapies and techniques - and by promoting their application in the NHS and around the world, in as fast a timeframe as is possible.

Mission
Our mission is to make our AHSC one of the top five AHSCs in the world within the next ten years, channelling excellence in research to provide world-class healthcare for patients.

Benefits to the community
We want to ensure that both our patient outcomes and satisfaction scores match those of the best international healthcare providers. We are working with local care providers to improve our patients' complete experience of care, from before hospital to their inpatient or outpatient visit and then to aftercare at home.

Benefits to staff and students
We are dedicated to fostering a supportive learning culture that will take a broad view of education from undergraduate level through to postgraduate degrees and continuing professional development for all healthcare professionals. We are working across institutional barriers to help all staff make discoveries and find innovative ways of treating patients. We aim to create opportunities for our staff to progress their careers and become leaders, researchers and teachers in their fields.