An awards scheme has been launched to recognise and celebrate innovation in healthcare throughout the East Midlands. Sponsored by the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN), cash prizes are available across a range of categories.

The entry deadline is 11 July and the awards are open to all organisations involved in healthcare including NHS trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups, universities, businesses, local government and third sector / voluntary organisations.

Entries are invited from staff at all levels, especially those on the frontline and at more junior levels with ideas to tackle problems and improve services for patients.

EMAHSN Managing Director Professor Rachel Munton said: "The NHS faces major challenges to meet the increasing demand for services and growing financial pressures. Innovation is central to overcoming these challenges. Great ideas and solutions are being generated every day throughout the East Midlands. We want to celebrate these innovative ideas and explore the potential to develop and adopt them on a wider scale so they benefit patients throughout the region – and potentially the UK."

The East Midlands awards build on similar innovation competitions running for nine years in the East of England and Yorkshire and Humber regions, led by Health Enterprise East and Medipex respectively. This year EMAHSN has joined forces with the two organisations to extend the competition to the East Midlands. There are six award categories in the East Midlands competition, each with a £2,000 prize to help the winner develop their innovation:

• Patient dignity& experience: resources, training aids or improvements to care pathways to help staff deliver a better experience for patients. This could focus on improved communication, pain management, eating and drinking, privacy,personal hygiene, social inclusion and other cultural issues.
• Improving access, experience and outcomes for underserved communities: services, resources or interventions that improve access and outcomes for underserved communities, including people living in rural and remote areas and black and minority ethnic communities.
• Mental Health: improving the lives of adults, children and young people with mental health problems, for example through new care pathways, publications, manuals,leaflets, training packages, health promotion campaigns, therapies, therapeutic tools or referral systems.
• Frontline staff innovations: for staff at more junior levels, especially inpatient-facing roles in NHS organisations with ideas that benefit patient care or resolve unmet needs, for example though improved care pathways, infection control or disease management.
• Medical Technology: aimed at innovations that support EMAHSN's priority clinical areas of frail older people, stroke rehabilitation, mental health, diabetes and obesity. Innovations could focus on medical devices, clinical equipment, diagnostic assays and kits or therapeutic agents, and could be new innovations or something that significantly improves existing practice.
• Software& Telehealth: aimed at innovations that support EMAHSN's priority clinical areas of frail older people, stroke rehabilitation, mental health, diabetes and obesity:
• Software innovations such as new information management systems, databases and mobile point of care diagnostics
• Telehealth innovations including devices, services or software applications to help build people's independence at home, enable them to take greater responsibility for managing their own long term health conditions, or exercise choice over how and when care and support is provided.

Entries will need to show:

- How the innovation addresses an identified unmet need

- Inventiveness – what's new and original

- How it reflects one or more of the four AHSN objectives – click here to view

- The impact (or potential impact) on patients,carers, service delivery or any wider socio-economic benefits

- The readiness for implementation (i.e. not just at theresearch stage)

- The ways patients, carers and the wider public have been engaged in developing and implementing the innovation

- Collaborative, inclusive and compassionate leadership.

To find out more: follow this link for more information and to enter the awards

Please note: whilst applications will be treated in confidence, applicants are advised not to disclose confidential information which may prejudice their current or future intellectual property rights or copyright.

Posted on Monday 19th May 2014