Alder Hey Children’s NHS FT has launched its first start-up collaboration programme, to support early stage innovations through a 14-week Innovation Lab.
The programme provides start-ups with access to key stakeholders across the specialist hospital, to help them test and validate their solutions.
Made up of two sprints, the first 10-week sprint will focus on clinical validation followed by a 4-week commercial validation sprint, where sponsor companies will provide hands on support to plan the expansion of the solutions across Alder Hey and potentially further.
The accelerator is hoping to find new solutions to support children and young people, and their families, with two opportunities outlined in the brief:
The first is to ‘bring UX to the patient experience; gamification & the child WOW factor’. The brief states: “In today’s day and age kids expect to be wow’d through gamification and fun, which have also been proven to reduce anxiety and promote healing. We are on a mission to leverage the technology of today to engage children throughout their journey at Alder Hey. Within this category we are also on the hunt for solutions that WOW children and young people by being inclusive and supporting the patient/ family experience as a whole.”
The second category focuses on simplyifing complex processes, and is titled ‘hospital optimisation; rethinking the end-to-end journey’. The category brief here focuses on operational process, and highlights: “We want to reimagine the entire end-to-end operational journey with a patient, clinician and staff-centric approach. Themes within this category could include solutions to support patient management, workflow management and clinician support. Therefore, meeting a number of stakeholders needs is a crucial aspect to this category.”
Plans for future sprints have been outlined, with an anticipated start from January 2022. These sprints could include training, non-invasive diagnostics, surgical safety and others.
Applications for the first accelerator programme close at 23:59 on Friday 25 September 2021, and will be run by L Marks and sponsored by DPD and Regatta.
For further information, please visit the Alder Hey Innovation website here.
