Past Winners
Past WinnersMulti Layered Disposable Apron
Miss Kaur Kuldeep Bhangal, Orthopaedic SpR, London
Winner of the NPSA Award for Best Innovation in Patient Safety
This is a novel product to change behaviours of healthcare professionals and raise awareness of MRSA.
Inspired by a tear away visor used by Formula 1 drivers during their races, Kuar Kuldeep developed the multilayered disposable apron to speed up the turnaround time between patients on a busy ward round. KK demonstrated that although it made sense to wear an apron when seeing a patient, it doesn’t happen in practice during a busy ward round, because the staff are overstretched and it is these simple measures that lose out.
Safe Surgery System Utilising RFID Tagging
Mr Morgan, Consultant Surgeon, Birmingham
Winner of BT Award for Best eHealth Innovation
This is a business that uses off the shelf technology in a novel way to improve the safety of patients undergoing day case surgery.
The team have developed an RFID tagging system applied as a wristband to the patient on admission. A digital photo is taken which is added to the patient record on a server. The same server is also connected to digital touch screens on the ward and in the operating theatre, enabling all staff involved in the patient journey to be fully up to date.
MODS (Microscopic Observation of Drug Susceptibility)
Dr David Moore & Team, Imperial College London & University of Lima
The Overall Winner & Best Innovation to Improve Global Health
This is a new rapid diagnostic test for active TB, a curable disease which sadly kills 5,000 people a day around the world.
The test relies on the characteristic growth pattern of Mycobacterium TB grown in a special liquid media and viewed using an inverted light microscope. Using this technique the bacteria can be identified in days, unlike traditional culture methods, which can take six weeks. The addition of drugs to the liquid media in a 24 well plate allows the identification of the appropriate drugs needed to treat the disease within days.
Opticare & Opticare Arthro Eye Drop Dispensers
Mrs Alison Wilson, MD of Cameron Graham Limited, Huddersfield
Winner of the Best Medical Device Innovation
Opticare and Opticare Arthro are new designs of eye drop dispensers. Alison’s invention has an eye drop bottle loaded into an easy grip dispenser barrel which includes a patented double squeeze mechanism to deliver a single drop of eye medication to the centre of the eye.
Patients receive the treatment they need, regain their independence, and waste and cost are minimised. Opticare and Opticare Arthro are single patient, repeat use products that are protected by patents, a registered design and a trademark.
Novel device to correct bony deformity in the skeletally immature
Mr John Burke, Consultant Paediatric Spinal Surgeon, Edinburgh
Winner of the ChildLine Award to Improve Child Health
John and his team are developing a new concept to treat progressive bony deformities in curved spines. This device aims to automatically extend with growth and at the same time correct the deformity without the need for further surgery. As the child grows the device straightens out and so does the scoliosis.
The device could have many other applications, such as in the treatment of club foot, post traumatic deformity, knock-knees or even treating other bony abnormalities in place of realignment procedures.
Online Translation Service for Mental Health History Taking
Dr Jason Taylor, Consultant Psychiatrist, London
Winner of the PiC Award for Best Mental Health Innovation
Dr Taylor has developed a web-based service to help patients who speak poor English, communicate better with doctors. His innovation enables patients to have histories taken in their own language via the use of a computer keyboard at their own home. If they do not have internet access they can access it from the surgery.
His system provides an anonymised, immediate English translation, automatically formatted to resemble a traditional detailed history and forwarded to the doctor prior to initial appointment. It is also good for people with hearing difficulties, or those who are housebound or suffer from agoraphobia.
T SPOT™-TB
Dr Peter Wrighton-Smith, CEO of Oxford Immunotec, Oxford
Winner of the Equinox Award for Best Business Proposition
T SPOT™ - is a new blood test to diagnose latent TB infection. T SPOT-TB is based on a breakthrough in diagnostic testing that allows the measurement of individual T cells specific to mycobacterium tuberculosis.
It allows reliable screening and early detection of TB infection and because it is a blood test the patient does not need to return to have their test read. Results are available the following day.
Managing Pain Management
Dr Cathy Price, Consultant in Pain Management, Southampton
Winner of the McKinsey Award for Best Innovation in Healthcare Leadership
Cathy & her team have developed an improved service for patients suffering from chronic pain. They have restored the chronic pain service by overhauling existing referral protocols, prescribing guidelines and introducing education programmes and primary care team support mechanisms plus linking up with the Expert Patient Programme and other support networks. Waiting times have been eliminated and better community services have been developed. The service had to resort to some rather aggressive tactics to get stakeholders take notice of what the pain clinic team wanted to do to reduce waiting lists - waits were so high a referral had become meaningless so the waiting list was suspended as in order to get talks going.
The team found that stakeholders did not really understand what the service did and the outcomes that were achieved, so a lot of data was required to prove their case. Although they initially only received partial buy-in, in the form of a six month pilot; she subsequently managed to get this to run for another six months. The data from this was highly persuasive and more investment was forthcoming for a permanent service. Overall the process took three years.
Dual Operating
Mr John Petri, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, James Paget Healthcare NHS Trust
Winner of the GHG Award for Best Innovation to Improve Healthcare Efficiency
John has managed to reduce his own waiting lists from over a year to virtually nil through a more efficient working practice. By operating two theatre teams simultaneously and dissociating the surgeon’s work from that of other theatre staff, John has tripled the number of operations he performs.
Mr Petri was amazed at the crisis management approach adopted by the NHS to tackle long waiting lists, in particular paying staff overtime to do “waiting list initiatives” or sending the patients overseas for their surgery. Previously John had worked in France in a hospital that had much shorter waiting lists despite having fewer surgeons. John knew that improved efficiency was the answer. Mindful of the feelings and concerns of colleagues, he knew it would be important to provide data to support his method and build interest.
Cheap Portable DNA Diagnostic Method for Point of Care
Dr Niall Armes, ASM Scientific Limited, Cambridge
Winner of the MRC Award for Best Biomedical Research Innovation
This team have developed a revolutionary DNA technology to diagnose serious diseases such as MRSA, influenza and TB.
ASM’s new technology is not dependant on this instrumentation and can be readily configured into products for use by a broad spectrum of healthcare professionals, and perhaps even for home use.
iQur - Personalised Diagnostics & Therapeutics for Hepatitis C
William Rosenberg, Professor of Hepatology, Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust
Winner of the Department of Health Award for Best National Health Innovation
iQur (formerly HepCgen) has developed a Hepatitis genotyping service, that can revolutionise the cost effectiveness of treatment for Hepatitis C & Hepatitis B. The test, which is rapid and accurate, can differentiate the different types of hepatitis, and enables clinicians to tailor treatment to the needs of the patient. It provides viral load monitoring and is a non-invasive method for assessing liver fibrosis by using blood markers.
iQur is a specialty pharmaceutical company at the forefront of international breakthroughs in the detection, treatment and monitoring of Hepatitis C and other liver diseases.