LKN Learning & Sharing Event Newsletter

Welcome to our latest newsletter

Welcome to the August Newsletter from the London Kidney Network. This edition celebrates the incredible work of London colleagues who are making real improvements to kidney services, and to the lives of our patients.

On Monday 21 July 2025, we held our LKN Learning & Sharing Event at the Royal College of Nursing in Cavendish Square in London.

A diverse group of clinicians, patients, commissioners, charity and industry partners spent a day together to listen, exchange ideas and learn about what works well, and what could work better!

Purpose of the day

Over the last three years, NHS England London has invested £1 million a year in each of our five Integrated Care Systems to transform the kidney pathway, with four clear aims:

1. Help prevent and detect kidney disease in our communities
2. Improve the management of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in primary care
3. Slow down the progression and worsening of the disease so it takes longer until patients reach the stage where their kidneys stop working effectively
4. Improve access to care and choice for patients when they eventually reach end stage kidney disease

Our event was an opportunity for teams to:

• Learn from leaders about the importance of system working and evidenced based improvement
• Showcase their projects/pilots that have made a measurable impact 
• Join workshops to discuss how to move from pilots to sustainable improvements in kidney services
• Make connections with like-minded colleagues across London

Our day in numbers

120 attendees
30 speakers
24 posters
15 professional groups
12 presentations
8 patients and advocates
7 Subject Matter Experts
7 Health Innovation Network facilitators
5 ICS Project/Pilot Leads

And 100’s of valuable conversations and smiling faces!

What did attendees say?

People were energised by the enthusiasm in the room, and the breadth and depth of conversations across a whole range of themes.

Several of our speakers left us with key take-away thoughts:

A focus for the 10 Year Plan: 
“Know your neighbourhood”
Prof Paul Cockwell, NHS Birmingham and Solihull

If we do just one thing:
“If we can’t get Blood Pressure right, we may as well all go home!”
Dr Matthew Graham-Brown, University of Leicester 

Use the evidence to guide our practice:
“Look at your CVD Prevent data”
Lauren Fensome, Boehringer Ingelheim

Help busy GPs manage kidney disease: 
“Give people tools they understand”
Dr Kuldhir Johal, Harrow PCN

Encouraging patients to manage their own care:
“Take one small step – today”
Dr Madhvi Joshi, Harrow PCN

Overcoming health literacy and language challenges: 
“Make it easy for patients to understand – ask them ‘How is your plumbing?’”
Dr Vasa Gnanapragasam, SWL ICB

Content Workshop & Output from the day

We have brilliant content to share from the event. Please follow the links below:

1. Agenda with speaker presentations
2. Kidney Research UK report, Health Economics of Kidney Disease, 2023
3. Themed workshop posters and presentations:
– CKD Early Identification & Prevention
– CRM (Cardiorenal metabolic)
– Acute Renal Replacement Therapy
– Supportive Care and Frailty
4. Summary outputs from the workshops

Survey headlines

Feedback from our post-event survey indicates that people found the event positive and the most popular session was the 3Ps Project Spotlight, which included sharing evidence of impact.

We asked attendees:

What key messages did they take away?

“Time spent on audit, reflection, planning and networking is essential and valuable, not a luxury to be done out of hours” and “Coding is caring!”.

What was missing from the day?

“Concrete advice on negotiations or sustainability” and “how to overcome the challenge with SGLT2i prescribing and coding of intolerance or declined”

Our next steps

The prevalence of kidney disease is forecast to rise globally, and in London.  We have a huge body of robust evidence that confirms targeting kidney disease can save lives, improve quality of life, and protect economies and the viability of health systems.

Our LKN Learning & Sharing Event showed that London is at the forefront of putting theory into practice through the Renal 3Ps Transformation Programme.

Our collective challenge is to work out how to keep kidney disease a priority within the roll out of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan.  Together, we need to ensure that the NHS in London is well equipped to manage the rising demands of CKD by staying focussed on preventing or delaying CKD progression.

We will continue to support evaluation of the pilots, and work with ICS teams as they develop Strategic Commissioning plans.  Our target outcome is for the high impact interventions from the kidney pilots to become commissioned as part of a sustainable service and regarded as business as usual for the NHS in London.

Please stay in touch with the LKN team and share your insights and ideas: lkn.londonkidneynetwork@nhs.net

And thank you…

With a special thank you to the LKN team for organising the day, to our sponsors Boehringer Ingelheim, and to everyone who attended for making the day a huge success.