Formal NHS Scotland partner InnoScot Health is launching a fresh innovation drive this autumn with the aim of engaging and inspiring nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals (AHPs), giving a voice to their innovative healthcare ideas and a platform for empowerment.
With patients’ needs at the heart of everything they do, these staff groups are quite simply the backbone of the healthcare system – without their invaluable hard work taking place across every part of Scotland, our NHS couldn’t deliver the valuable care which the nation requires.
As a uniquely skilled workforce, they are also well placed to use their knowledge to make a real impact on the transformation of the health service.
The Scottish Government’s Nursing 2030 vision acknowledged that, as we move through the next decade, nurses’ sphere of influence and interest is widening to include promoting health and wellbeing and tackling inequalities.
Similar developments in the roles of midwives and AHPs are evident, and we are seeing growing opportunities to tap into their skills and experience.
Indeed, the CSO NHS Researcher Development Fellowship is aimed specifically at NHS employees working within these groups to enable them to explore research as part of their existing role.
Building upon this, InnoScot Health’s autumn innovation drive is targeted specifically at nurses, midwives, and AHPs across every health board in Scotland.
It is designed to not only recognise and celebrate their unrelenting contribution to improvement, but also encourage them to become innovators by submitting ideas, simple or complex, and address healthcare challenges.
It doesn’t have to be about earth-shattering breakthroughs; it can be straightforward solutions too if they make a difference.
Nurses, midwives, and AHPs are at the frontline – they see first-hand the challenges of delivering high-quality patient care day in, day out.
Importantly, this also provides really unique understanding around how things can be done better – whether that be to improve patient care, heighten efficiency, or improve working practices within their teams.
When it comes to ensuring equity for service users; their knowledge can also help to inform better experiences and clinical outcomes. By leveraging those insights, they can become agents of change.
InnoScot Health has been working in partnership with NHS Scotland for 22 years. By harnessing the talent, entrepreneurism, and commitment of almost 190,000 staff working across the NHS in this country, it supports improvements in patient care and stimulates economic wealth.
With nurses, midwives and AHPs making up a third of the country’s health and social care workforce, InnoScot Health believes they can be powerful drivers of change.
The organisation has great experience of working successfully with these groups to transform initial ideas into successful products that are now making an impact in healthcare settings across the country and internationally.
Odette Brooks, a critical care infection surveillance nurse at NHS Lothian, wanted to create a fun and engaging way to train staff on important infection management policies and procedures.
From this, the Infection Management Game was born and developed alongside InnoScot Health before being manufactured by Focus Games.
It offers a unique approach to training in the effective management of patients with suspected or known infections and encourages working with relevant policy documents to improve knowledge and confidence when managing patients and risk.
Brooks said: “InnoScot Health took care of all the contractual and legal elements of the process while the team at Focus Games produced the game. Importantly, this allowed me to remain focused on my clinical work.”
For InnoScot Health, managing the commercial aspects of product development – which might include intellectual property, medical device regulation, funding, prototyping and commercialisation – is of equal importance to the ability to support innovators through the process, ensuring they can balance professional and personal demands during the innovation journey.
The experience of the team is instrumental to this. West of Scotland innovation manager Frances Ramsay brings decades of nursing experience to her role with InnoScot Health and is part of a national team encouraging innovators to submit ideas, and then evaluating the potential of those ideas.
While ideas are welcomed 24/7 from all innovators across Scotland, initiatives targeted towards specific staff groups, dedicated innovation calls, and regional competitions all help to encourage and inspire even more healthcare professionals to come forward.
Just last year InnoScot Health partnered with NHS Grampian on an innovation competition which sought to draw out new ideas from the local workforce for improving patient care across the region.
The overall winner was Rachel Allanach, a speech and language therapist (SLT) from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary who impressed with an innovative seating solution to assist acute and community therapists working with patients.
The design continues to be refined with the help of engineering students at Heriot-Watt University, as part of InnoScot Health’s continued support of collaborative innovation.
With a strong record of supporting nurses, midwives and AHPs over the last two decades, InnoScot Health is confident this latest call to the community will offer fresh ideas.
This diverse staff group tap into almost every part of the healthcare system providing great opportunities to inspire change and improvement.
To submit an idea or proposal, complete the short online form on the innoscot.com website. All submissions will be carefully evaluated and those that meet InnoScot Health’s general criteria for support will receive assistance to develop their innovation including guidance to source funding for the development of the idea; regulatory support; project management; and extensive innovation expertise.
The team rapidly assess and support selected innovations from concept to final product with the ultimate aim of getting a new product or service onto the market which can make a difference to patients and service users, while generating income for NHS Scotland, and for the innovative member(s) of staff who inspired it.
Innovations with a sustainability focus and which support NHS Scotland’s commitment to a greener NHS are also especially welcome.
Anyone can be a healthcare innovator by improving patient care, enhancing working practices, and generating a financial return which benefits all. InnoScot Health has the knowledge and expertise to help them take their ideas to the next level.
A life-saving solution
The Patient Transfer Scale (PTS) started life as an idea from Gillian Taylor, an Emergency Department Nurse at NHS Lanarkshire. It was designed to address the needs of patients admitted to hospital who are either too sick to stand on scales or are immobile.
This is important for patient care as obtaining an accurate patient weight is critical for medication dosage. The scale combines a standard patient transfer board with a class III approved weighing scale, enabling medication to be administered quickly for conditions like stroke and sepsis.
The PTS was developed alongside InnoScot Health who worked closely with Taylor to evaluate the initial product, protect the intellectual property, secure funding, develop the prototype, and test in more than 30 hospitals, with multi-disciplinary teams using the product and providing feedback.
It is manufactured by Marsden, a leader in medical weighing equipment, and was successfully launched in 2018. It is now in use in hospital settings around the world including the US and Australia and won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation.
Partner Content in association with InnoScot Health