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Bid for Better – The Dragons Den of Healthcare Innovation

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News Digital, Data & AI Surrey

Bid for Better Winners Lunch

There are thousands of NHS employees who have a lightbulb moment every day, that new idea to transform the quality of care for their patients or improve the wellbeing of their colleagues. The Bid for Better programme, through Royal Surrey Charity, was set up to turn these ideas from Royal Surrey County Hospital staff into a reality and improve patient care.

Over £230,000 has been committed from Royal Surrey Charity and the University of Surrey to fund 13 innovative ideas through the Bid for Better programme with the purpose of providing benefit to patients treated at the Royal Surrey and associated hospitals. These ideas range from co-designing a cancer wellbeing toolkit to help patients adapt to cancer, to researching the link between nutritional status and surgical outcomes and investigating the impact of light on patient deconditioning during inpatient stays.

The Surrey Heartlands Health Tech Accelerator (HTA) has been delighted to support the Bid for Better programme; through our partners at the Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network (KSS AHSN), we’ve provided; over 25 drop-in sessions to give advice to Royal Surrey staff on their ideas and reviewed over 50 applications as a member of the judging panel. We were also delighted to recently host the winner’s event!

However, our support does not stop there. KSS AHSN, and the HTA, will continue to provide support and expertise to the funded projects, across the next 12 months.

Jenny Partridge, who has been involved in Bid for Better on behalf of Kent Surrey Sussex Academic Health Science Network had the below to say on the initiative:

“Working as a judge on the Bid for Better programme was a fascinating experience.  There were 54bids to review in a two-stage process with bids at the second stage required to give more detail on their idea and costings.

It was very rewarding to be part of the judging panel on the Bid for Better programme.  It was a bit like being on Dragons Den with the innovators given 5 minutes to pitch their idea followed by questions from the panel.  I was most impressed with the quality of the ideas being presented and the enthusiasm of the clinicians and their colleagues who really wanted to make a difference to patients.

The scope and range of innovations was very broad – from researching potential links between gut health and menopause to developing an affordable visual aid for radiotherapy patients who have to hold their breath during treatment.”

Bid for Better participants have recently spent time at the HTA to take part an evaluation workshop run by Unity Insights, a specialist health economics and evaluation company who are a sister company of KSS AHSN. On-going support to participants, such as these kinds of workshops, will be provided throughout the development of their innovations.

The HTA has been set up to help improve the health and care landscape within Surrey and the wider M3 corridor, through the expertise of its partnership (KSS AHSN, University of Surrey, Surrey Heartlands, Surrey and Borders Partnership Trust and SETsquared Surrey) and provide a physical testing space to ensure that innovative healthcare technology is fit for purpose; and as a neighbour of and network partner with the Royal Surrey, it seemed a no-brainer to be involved in such a worthwhile programme.

To read more about Bid for Better from the Royal Surrey, please click here.

If you are a clinical entrepreneur and the support described above sounds like it could be helpful, and you would like to know more about the Surrey Heartlands Health Tech Accelerator, including the support that Kent Surrey Sussex AHSN can provide, please get in touch via email: kssahsn.bridgingthegap@nhs.net

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