For the Christmas and new year break we have brought you a roundup of HSJ’s best practice highlights of 2015. Today our focus is on innovation and technology. 

Lambeth: The area with an appetite for service change

London’s borough of Lambeth is exploring new and innovative ways of commissioning mental health services, with commissioners using an inclusive approach to bring about drastic change. Tom Beresford and colleagues look at the impact.

Care charts can personalise care

Zoe Harris, one of HSJ’s top innovators of 2014, explains how personalised care charts can help in transmitting patients’ needs and preferences instantly when they are unable to communicate.

Diabetes and diet: There’s an epidemic of misinformation

Dr Aseem Malhotra calls for greater focus on prevention and lifestyle changes to fight the rising epidemic of type 2 diabetes – moving away from exaggerated medical interventions and misleading dietary guidelines.

Patient safety: Errors need to be minimised

Shreshtha Trivedi reports on how to make our health service safer, including following the lead of industries such as aviation, introducing an open, no-blame culture and scrutinising the whole patient pathway.

Raise the bar with barcode technology

Supermarkets can track products that have been declared unsafe immediately, so why can’t hospitals? Claire Read reports on how using standardised barcode technology can help in achieving significant patient safety benefits.

More best of 2015 in