Empowering Change: A Nurse’s Journey as an Innovation Champion within the NHS

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas, a seasoned NHS leader, weaves innovation and education into her mission to enhance patient experiences.

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas spearheaded a project to enhance family support in healthcare settings, training over 100 acute mental health ward staff in effectively addressing patient needs.

She led the national Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) programme, which trained over 500 EIP practitioners in Family Intervention within 4 months.

MindClicked is an ethnically inclusive health and wellbeing screening app which aims to reduce health inequalities, aligning with the NHS Long Term Plan.

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas is a head of portfolio at NHS England who enrolled onto the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in 2018.

With 20 years of NHS experience, Henrietta initially trained as a Mental Health Nurse before transitioning to project and programme management roles. In 2018, she pioneered a culturally sensitive web app prototype aimed at supporting mental wellbeing screening and maintenance for underrepresented populations.

“When I worked as a nurse, entrepreneurship wasn’t even part of the conversation.”

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas started her career in the NHS as a mental health nurse working at East London NHS Foundation Trust, where she saw firsthand opportunities for improvement in her service. With no clear path to innovate and entrepreneurship remaining an unchartered territory in healthcare at this time, Henreitta felt unsatisfied within her role. Exploring how she could support service improvement; she channelled her inventive spirit into research and enrolled onto a formal academic programme completing her Master of Science in Interprofessional Practice. Henrietta has continued to engage in mental health research with University College London to develop innovative interventions, especially for people from minority ethnic groups*.

Re-visiting her nursing dissertation, Henrietta delved into the impact of parental mental illness on children. Going beyond theory, she engaged with parents and families of hospitalised patients and found they had a shared desire of a comforting space—a “home away from home”—to be with their unwell loved ones during challenging times. This insight fuelled Henrietta’s commitment to improving family support within healthcare settings and she started to build a project to deliver this improvement.

Henrietta lacked prior experience in projects or business case development but tenaciously constructed and submitted one to her trust. During this time, she successfully achieved external funding from The Big Lottery Fund and consequently gained support from her trust and they collaboratively established visiting rooms with service users. She then trained over 100 acute ward staff in addressing the needs of patients and orchestrated community-involved events for families.

After the success of her first project, Henrietta wanted to explore what she could do next and after struggling to prove the robustness of the research she was producing, and nearly leaving the NHS to pursue her other love of baking cakes, she discovered the Darzi Fellowship. This prestigious fellowship aims to develop leaders from multi-professional backgrounds in their ability to undertake complex change initiatives that have a profound impact on them and the organisations they work for. Henrietta successfully enrolled and it gave her the opportunity to not only facilitate meaningful projects, but also reinvent herself as a healthcare leader. During this time, Henrietta spearheaded the patient safety and quality improvement pre-registration nursing curriculum project in the North Central and East London area. Her responsibilities encompassed conducting meetings and focus groups with lecturers from higher educational institutes to assess the extent to which their curriculum addressed patient safety and quality improvement. Additionally, she facilitated focus groups involving students and healthcare trusts, enhancing their comprehension of these critical topics.

Henrietta then progressed to delivering a range of projects within Health Education England (HEE), including leading on the national Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) programme, where she set up a framework agreement for Family Intervention and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for psychosis training nationally. This framework resulted in training over 500 EIP practitioners nationally in Family Intervention over a 4-month period. She then progressed to becoming the Topol Review Project Lead* where she supported the independent technology review commissioned by the Secretary of State for Health and Care which advocates for a developing a digitally ready workforce for the rapid adoption of technologies like genomics, digital medicine, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Henrietta then transitioned to a role as a clinical fellow within the Leading Change Adding Value (LCAV) team at NHS England. LCAV is a national framework for nursing, midwifery, and care staff, which extends the principles of compassion in practice and aligns directly with the NHS Five Year Forward View published in 2014. * Henrietta played a pivotal role in establishing the first national research portfolio for nursing, midwifery, and care staff and accomplished this by co-chairing a task and finish group, which was comprised of senior academics and researchers in collaboration with the Council of Deans of Health.

“The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme emphasises the importance of falling in love with the problem—a mindset crucial for innovation.”

During her time at HEE, she attended an informative conference exploring the digital aspects of healthcare. This experience sparked an idea to leverage a digital platform for confidential and secure conversations about mental health. She then found the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, where she started to develop her innovative idea which focused on using digital tools to support mental health and well-being, particularly for black and minority ethnic groups as she recognised that these populations often express distress differently and may fall through gaps in the system. Her goal was to create inclusive support, transcending cultural norms and language barriers to reduce health inequalities.

Henrietta then founded MindClicked which is an ethno-culturally sensitive mental health screening tool using machine learning to engage diverse groups of the population, especially those from Black African and Afro Caribbean backgrounds who have the poorest outcomes from mental health services. * With the support from her brother, she developed a culturally sensitive webapp prototype which she used to apply and successfully gain a place on Cohort 3 of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme.

The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP) supported Henrietta with high-quality mentoring, a network of healthcare entrepreneurs, and critical business insights. The programme covered everything from idea generation to monetisation, which supported Henrietta early on in her innovation journey. She also gained expertise in delivering confident and succinct pitches, as well as receiving valuable knowledge about intellectual property and commercialisation.

View of the CEP

“The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme is unique because it welcomes a diverse range of healthcare professionals beyond doctors, including both clinical and non-clinical staff. Through this programme, I realised that every conversation holds the potential for valuable connections, support, or funding, and it gave me the skills to deliver a concise and engaging pitch, which I still practice regularly.

From idea inception to monetisation, the CEP equipped me with comprehensive knowledge around commercialisation, IP and legal which has helped me to progress forward. In addition, I have had the privilege of working with fantastic mentors who challenged me to improve and expand upon my ideas. The NHS CEP stands out as one of the most impactful experiences in my 20-year career.”

Henrietta Mbeah-Bankas

Looking to the future

In 2019, Henrietta started a new job role with NHS England as the head of blended learning. In this role she is championing innovation in healthcare management, fuelled by her passion for innovation and education. Inspired by her experiences on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, she has enrolled in an Executive MBA programme, at the University of Cambridge, with a goal to fortify her knowledge and skills, to support the future of the NHS.

Balancing her personal and professional life was very challenging, and therefore Henrietta had to temporarily shelve her innovation, but remains determined to deliver mental health support for marginalised communities. To reach her goal, she currently seeks funding to assemble a dynamic team and propel her vision forward.

Henrietta says “If you would like to learn more or if you would be interested in supporting my innovation, please contact me. I would love to bring more people on this exciting journey.”

For more information, please click on the links below.

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