12 November 2009
NHS East Midlands hosts its first regional innovation showcase event on Friday (13 November), to learn from leading edge innovators and share best practice to achieve excellent quality care for NHS patients.
Over 250 delegates from healthcare, education, industry and the voluntary sector will come together for a one day event at Loughborough University Innovation Centre to hear from inspirational guest speakers, attend interactive workshops, and learn how innovation in other fields can help to deliver excellence in healthcare.
The event will provide a platform to showcase innovative practice from a wide range of industries where excellence has been achieved and what the future of innovation will look like. This will range from technical devices, to changes in working practice, and improved patient experience programmes. Live demonstrations and a variety of workshops will offer delegates exclusive insight into achieving successful innovations by sharing skills and experience from some of the leading players in the field, such as NHS Innovations East Midlands, 3M, Tunstall, IBM, NESTA and Rolls Royce.
This event builds on the national NHS innovation agenda launched earlier this year. Each SHA was given a new legal duty to promote innovation and a national EXPO event was held in June to demonstrate the best in innovation on a national scale. Both the National EXPO and the East Midlands EXPO focus on bringing together key stakeholders to share knowledge and understanding; to help them avoid duplication and ‘reinventing the wheel’, and make new ideas a reality more quickly, thereby achieving better and more productive outcomes for patients.
Kathy McLean, Medical Director and Lead Director for Innovation at NHS East Midlands says: “We see innovation as a key catalyst in pursuing the goal of increased quality in healthcare. We hope to achieve these results by accelerating the time taken from idea conception to completion. It’s our aim to do this by encouraging innovative thinking and practice across healthcare in the East Midlands for the benefit of the patients we serve. We hope to achieve this by engaging and supporting clinicians and other healthcare staff, together with the experience and skills from professionals in industry and universities”.
NHS East Midlands was also one of the first regions to launch their Regional Innovation Fund (RIF) in September, offering local NHS organisations and their partners the chance to apply for a share of £22 million over the next five years to make great ideas a reality. The first successful projects will be awarded this dedicated funding over the coming months.
