VeinTrain · HALO Intelligence Hub

Vascular Access Community of Practice

Join the conversation and help shape what comes next

Practical conversations connecting vascular access evidence, experience and implementation across organisations, professions and countries.

Join below to receive meeting details and updates about future sessions.

First open Community of Practice session

Wednesday 26 August, 2:00–3:00 pm UK

USA: 9:00 am Eastern · 8:00 am Central · 7:00 am Mountain · 6:00 am Pacific
Spain and South Africa: 3:00 pm · Somaliland: 4:00 pm · UAE: 5:00 pm · Afghanistan: 5:30 pm

A practical conversation about getting the job done with minimal resources, moving research into everyday practice, and what that looks like in Somaliland, South Africa, Lewisham and beyond.

We will begin with a short guidelines and Mokover briefing. Sarah will share field experience, what it is showing us, and how it is feeding the Intelligence Hub. Then we will open the discussion, your questions and the final word.

More dates will be announced after the first meeting. Monthly sessions are planned at two different times so that people in different time zones can take part.

Please join us

Add your name and email to receive joining details and Community of Practice updates.

Explore the HIIH open-access area

Visit the HALO Intelligence Hub for open-access learning, practical resources and developing intelligence. You will also be able to register your interests and choose what you would like to learn about as this area develops.

Open the HALO Intelligence Hub
Chapter one

The Challenge

A technical act inside a complex system

Vascular access involves patients, clinicians, educators, organisations, technology, research, policy and different local contexts. No single person or organisation sees the whole picture.

More information alone does not resolve that complexity. The starting question became: how do we create the conditions where the system itself can learn?

  • Look at the wholeConnect practice, learning, evidence and implementation.
  • Name complexityDo not simplify cross-boundary challenges into one isolated fix.
  • Protect local assuranceKeep supervision, scope and competency sign-off with the employer.
  • Invite the missing viewInclude the people who experience and deliver vascular access.
Chapter two

The Community

People learn by making sense together

A community of practice is not a mailing list or a content library. It brings a shared domain, a community and a developing practice together through regular interaction.

Sarah Phillips’s Integrated Care System work used that mechanism as a standing space for systems leaders to listen, learn, test assumptions and adapt. HALO carries the same principle into vascular access.

  • DomainA shared focus on vascular access.
  • CommunityPatients, practitioners, educators, organisations and partners.
  • PracticeEvidence, experience and implementation tested together.
  • ParticipationCapability built through contribution, not passive consumption.

Sources: Wenger-Trayner, Introduction to Communities of Practice; System Leaders Community of Practice.

Chapter three

The Learning

From innovation challenge to shared intelligence

The ICS Exemplar Hub created a collaborative space for innovation, combining governance oversight, co-design and accelerated learning. Its innovation challenges treated the intelligence already held across the system as a resource.

Three lessons carry into HALO: people own what they help create; real change happens in real work; and progress comes from connecting the system to more of itself.

  • Whole-system thinkingThe system, not one part, becomes the unit of learning.
  • Emergent solutionsThe answer is not decided before the right voices meet.
  • Co-designThose affected help shape what happens next.
  • Useful outputsLearning is carried back into practice.

Sources: ICS Exemplar Hub; ICS Innovation Challenges.

Chapter four

The Dialogue

A conversation designed to change what is possible

Living Systems Dialogues are facilitated conversations. They are not webinars, lectures or sales presentations. A shared intelligence briefing lets participants begin with what is known, what is uncertain and what needs exploring.

Each dialogue is designed as a steady, bounded place for shared sense-making, where the right people can make sense of complexity, challenge each other with care and explore how system transformation might work better for everyone.

  • Curiosity before certaintyExplore before defending a position.
  • Challenge is usefulDisagreement can reveal what the system has missed.
  • Expertise is sharedEvery participant contributes knowledge or experience.
  • Chatham House RuleParticipants may use information received, but neither the identity nor affiliation of speakers or participants may be revealed.

Sources: Systems Leadership Innovation Challenge; 4SD, fostering dialogue and collaborative actions; The Chatham House Rule.

Chapter five

The Transformation

HALO turns conversation into a living cycle

The Exemplar Hub becomes the HALO Intelligence Hub. The innovation challenge becomes a repeatable intelligence cycle. Vascular access expertise gives the method a focused clinical domain.

Healthcare challenge + evidence + innovation + lived experience + dialogue = shared intelligence
  1. Identify challenge
  2. Prepare briefing
  3. Bring perspectives together
  4. Facilitate dialogue
  5. Capture insight
  6. Create Hub outputs
  7. Identify the next challenge
  • BriefingsA shared starting point.
  • DialogueMultiple perspectives held together.
  • Knowledge Hub outputsReusable learning, not a one-off event.
  • New questionsThe next turn of the cycle.
Chapter six

The Future

A global dialogue that keeps learning

The programme will connect vascular access knowledge across borders and time zones through a regular dialogue rhythm. Dates and joining details are coming soon. Each dialogue is designed so participation remains real.

HALO intends its network to include people working in resource-constrained, conflict-affected or otherwise challenging settings as a core part of the dialogue, not an add-on. Over time, HALO also intends to convene in-person dialogues alongside VeinTrain's international work, bringing HALO trainers and practitioners together to support locally owned learning and explore system transformation, starting with vascular access.

  • ListenSurface what is happening in practice.
  • ConnectBring evidence, innovation and lived experience into one conversation.
  • Learn forwardTurn each dialogue into reusable intelligence and the next better question.

The ambition is not one global answer. It is a global space where healthcare can make better sense of vascular access together.

See the dialogue approach and date status

Locally owned, supported by HALO

Change becomes real when it is owned in practice.

HALO and VeinTrain can help organisations make sense of evidence, shape learning pathways, strengthen supervision and support teams to plan and reflect on implementation. The organisation owns how change is applied, governed and assured in its local context.

Learning, skill, ability and competence are connected, but they are not the same thing. Learning develops knowledge. Skills are developed through guided practice. Ability is the capacity to apply knowledge and skills. Competence integrates knowledge, skills and professional judgement, demonstrated in the relevant context and confirmed by an appropriately authorised assessor under the employer’s local governance process.

A VeinTrain certificate evidences training, learning activity or programme completion. HALO supports dialogue and learning. It does not provide patient-specific clinical advice or replace professional judgement, local policy, escalation procedures, scope of practice or final clinical competency sign-off.

Evidence trail

Sources supporting this story

  1. Community of practice

    The foundations for learning through shared domain, community, participation and developing practice.

    Wenger-Trayner
    ICS System Leaders Community

  2. Systems leadership and innovation

    The practical lineage connecting whole-system thinking, innovation challenges and the Exemplar Hub.

    ICS Innovation Challenge
    ICS Exemplar Hub
    ICS Innovation Challenges
    The King’s Fund

  3. Dialogue and collaborative action

    The dialogue approach that supports honest exploration, shared sense-making and collaborative action.

    4SD Foundation