Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has been selected to join the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme.
Led by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), an official partner of NHS England and NHS Improvement, the programme allows healthcare innovators to gain and hone commercial skills, knowledge and experience.
Chelsea and Westminster will be the only London-based NHS hospital working as a partner with the training programme, with a fresh intake of 194 entrepreneurs taking the total number of innovators to over 700.
Through the network, it’s expected the latest recruits will be provided with internship opportunities, access to funding and NHS test and evaluation sites, as well as academic and commercial facilities in a number of countries across the globe, and also gain knowledge exchange and customer connections.
So far, through the programme – which was founded in 2016 – from more than 500 entrepreneurs that were recruited during the first four years, 247 life science start-up companies have been created, while over £270million of funding has been raised, and more than 30 million patients have benefited from the innovations. According to Chelsea and Westminster, examples of those innovations include smartphone otoscopes and drones that can carry medical supplies between NHS sites.
Chris Chaney, Chief Executive of CW+, the official charity of Chelsea and Westminster, said: “We are delighted to be a partner with the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme and deliver on our shared vision to transform patient care and experience, as well as support our staff to innovate and bring new ideas to fruition.
“Our CW Innovation programme – jointly led by the Trust and its charity, CW+ – fast-tracks new technologies and innovations that address the most urgent and fundamental challenges faced by healthcare organisations today.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed an acceleration in innovation and research and we have advanced at pace to introduce a range of innovations into the day-to-day running of our hospitals. Our collaboration with ARU and the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme represents another exciting milestone for CW Innovation’s expanding portfolio of ‘test and scale’ partnerships that include digital healthcare, AI and machine learning, and remote patient-centred care.”
In 2021 alone, Chelsea and Westminster, and CW+, have featured in the news for numerous tech, innovation and digital initiatives, with a way-finder app for patients, its own innovation funding final, plus roll-outs of thermal screening and imaging technologies, and new apps for patients with diabetes and HIV.
