Healthcare innovators in Scotland are being urged to sign up to an NHS ‘clinical entrepreneur’ programme.
The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (CEP) is designed to help healthcare professionals rapidly turn their ideas into new diagnostics and treatments for frontline service delivery.
Led by Anglia Ruskin university, the workforce development programme is the largest of its kind focused on entrepreneurship, and is designed to enhance business skills among clinical workers.
The programme is underpinned by support from a coordination group consisting of InnoScot Health and other ‘forward-thinking, collaborative partners’ across Scotland – the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI), Scottish Enterprise, NHS Education Scotland, Scottish Health and Industry Partnership Group (SHIP), and Scottish Government.
Gillian Henderson, head of project management at InnoScot Health, said: “We want to encourage NHS Scotland staff with great ideas that are at any stage of development to get involved in the programme and maximise their learning, in turn accelerating the introduction of ground-breaking treatments and diagnostics. This is a great time to apply.”
InnoScot Health hosted the recent ‘Empowering healthcare professionals to transform services through innovation’ webinar which discussed the experiences of CEP entrepreneurs including the programme’s co-clinical Lead, Dr Tamsin Holland Brown, founder of Hear Glue Ear, and Dr Debbie Wake, CEO and chief medical officer at My Way Digital Health.
The year-long programme is free to join and provides learning, opportunities, and experiences, allowing NHS Scotland entrepreneurs to develop commercial skills and knowledge that can accelerate their innovations and help them in their day jobs.
CEP offers mentoring, bespoke commercial education, customer matching, resources, development tools and access to a community of likeminded individuals and industry experts.
Dedicated learning on how to build a start-up or develop an intrapreneurial idea is delivered as a series of educational events called ‘pit stops’, which can be attended either in person or virtually.
The latest pit stop event took place in Glasgow on Wednesday 11 October when an evening gathering provided a platform to take stock of progress and encourage networking while offering an opportunity to hear from founders, industry experts, and CEP partners DHI. It was followed by a second, full day of learning.
Applications for cohort 8 are encouraged before 29 October. Apply here: https://nhscep.com/apply-now/