A new £12m health centre has opened in north Brixton to provide general practice, community health and social care services under one roof.

The state-of-the-art Akerman Health Centre brings together a range of services to provide convenience and access to support for local residents.

Services will be provided by Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Community Health Services, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

Angela Dawe, Director of Operations at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, said the centre would become the “health hub for local people”.

The centre will house three separate GP practices. In addition it will provide care for long-term conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, access to mental health services and dentistry. It will also be used as the main base for district nursing and specialised maternity services in Brixton.

Dr Adrian McLaughlin, Chair of NHS Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group, said the “great strength” of the facility will be its integration of healthcare and social care services.

“We hope that the centre will also bring shorter waiting times and better access to services for patients,” he said. “For us as clinical commissioners, reducing inequalities and improving healthcare for local people is a priority, and the Akerman Health Centre will go some way to achieving this.”

Three foundation trusts in London have outlined proposals to merge together to create the largest trust in England.

The boards of King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and South London and Maudsley have proposed to form a new organisation that would create an annual turnover of more than £2bn.

The proposal details how a “single organisation could make better use” of combined assets which would release funds for “new models of healthcare” in the capital.

The full business case will now be presented to the three boards, the board of King’s College London and university partners in early 2013. If accepted, a merger could be completed the following year.

Barts Health Trust is currently the largest foundation trust in England. It has a turnover of £1.1bn – the largest in the NHS.

Proposals suggest the super trust could save between 3% and 5% in non-clinical support functions.

However, the proposal states that a merger would be “unacceptable” and “fail” if it resulted in a “remote, centralised organisation”. “It would have to operate in a very different way to be effective,” said the proposal.

If completed, it would be the first time that foundation trusts had merged and would have to be approved by the Office of Fair Trading.

The King’s College London has appointed its first Chair of Pharmaceutical Innovation, Professor Luigi Martini.

Professor Martini, a Director at Rainbow Medical Engineering, will work within the College’s Institute of Pharmaceutical Science to ensure new discoveries and inventions across King’s Health Partners are transferred to clinical and pharmaceutical development.

Professor Martini said he was “honoured” to join the “first-class institution” and that the role demonstrates the “King’s visionary leadership and ambition”.

Prior to joining Rainbow, the professor was a senior director of preclinical and pharmaceutical development for Emerging Markets and Asia Pacific at GSK. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

King’s Health Partners is one of five academic health sciences centres across the UK that provide health care to patients and undertake research. It combines the King’s College London University and the three NHS Foundation Trusts: Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley.