News and blogs

Healthcare Business Connect Lancashire (HBCL), in which the Innovation Agency is a partner, recently ran their third SME showcase event with local members of the U3A in Ulverston. 

On a day to day basis, healthcare staff are applying the four core principles of ethics that are ingrained in them, namely autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence. However, new technologies and big data bring added complexities to an NHS that is already awash with ethical dilemmas where utilitarian and deontological principles conflict and cause stress for hard pressed staff.

Health Innovation North West Coast has relaunched the Health Innovation North West Coast Exchange, our online forum for colleagues across the healthcare sector to share innovations and challenges. The expanded website now enables users to collaborate on ideas, projects and products to improve patient care. 

Every single day in health and care organisations catastrophes are prevented from occurring. This is not just down to the fact that people are highly trained, but also because they work in teams where they are able to speak out when they see a problem.

Psychological safety is the term that describes this phenomenon; it is where people in teams are not afraid to admit mistakes and where problems are seen as learning opportunities. 

At the Innovation Agency we have a mission to help people live longer, healthier lives. 

This means preventing them from becoming ill, or if they become ill, ensuring that they can live with health conditions in a way that helps them to have a full, meaningful life. 

Xploro, a digital therapeutics platform developed in Manchester, and Triple Tread®, a high performance tricycle manufacturer based in Congleton, were both winners in the final round of the European Institute of Technology’s (EIT) Health Headstart Awards. 

The finalists have been announced for this year’s NHS in the North Excellence in Supply Awards, celebrating inspirational examples of businesses, third sector organisations and the NHS working together to provide great patient care in the North of England.

Innovation Agency Chief Executive Dr Liz Mear has been appointed as non executive director of Health Education England (HEE), the body responsible for NHS staffing, training and development.

She is one of five new non executive directors at HEE, alongside Professor Andrew George, Professor Soraya Dhillon, Andrew Foster and Professor John Latham.

I entered the NHS five years ago after spending 20 years in the private sector, latterly in banking. From finance to health is an unusual career trajectory but it helped me bring into the NHS some valuable insights, particularly about attitudes to change.

Merseyside-based surgical training device manufacturer Inovus Medical has secured £1 million from SBRI Healthcare, an NHS programme supported by the Innovation Agency and the wider AHSN Network.

The funding is to develop the company’s augmented reality laparoscopic simulator, which was backed in its earliest stages by an initial £100,000 from SBRI Healthcare.