We were delighted to welcome The Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) as a programme partner to the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in 2021. This partnership has allowed the programme to expand into Scotland. We caught up with the team at Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre to find out more.
The Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) is a national resource, funded by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council.
DHI are a collaboration between the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Strathclyde with a focus on innovation in digital health and care to help the people of Scotland live longer, healthier lives while providing sustainable and inclusive growth for the economy.
The centre collaborates, co-designs and transforms great ideas into real solutions that have benefits to the system and Scotland’s citizens, which includes attracting inward investment and trade missions with Scottish businesses. The centre has a number of key assets open to partners including a Demonstrator and Simulation Environment, which includes access to open architecture to quickly prove data integration, this can often lead to the opportunity to gain access to a variety of Real-World Environments and living lab testbeds. DHI commented ‘’Having built a cloud-based ICT architecture learning from best in class around the world, our Demonstration and Simulation environment, based on a data exchange and a personal data store, can safely and effectively blend citizen-generated data with formal health and care data and allow the data to flow securely in a fully consented manner into either the hospital EHRs or GP systems and data to flow from there into the citizens own data store.’’
George Crook – The Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Health and Care Institute, explains: “The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme is an ideal way of solving the current challenges being experienced by those delivering services and those receiving care. By supporting Clinical Entrepreneurs to develop and evolve their ideas into products and services you can create a bottom-up driver for positive change. You can enthuse and energise the workforce through these activities and encourage others with good ideas to come forward. The most successful innovations come from the frontline, not from governments or senior leaders. Clinicians have multiple skills on top of their core professional training these need to be given a forum for expression. After all it will improve job satisfaction and encourage and support the recruitment and retention of staff.
As we move forward, we are seeking to establish a chapter of the Clinical Entrepreneur Programme in Scotland and become part of a wider community of entrepreneurs. As an innovation centre we can support clinical entrepreneurs by giving them access to our networks spanning industry, academia and the 3rd sector, support mentoring and provide signposting for additional layers of support.’’
DHI understands the importance of innovation communicating: ‘’Innovation does not happen by accident, it needs to be encouraged, nurtured, and supported. Leadership is of vital importance but equally important in the mix is entrepreneurship. It needs to be recognised for what it is and encouraged, celebrated, and focussed to deliver what we need as a nation. From this partnership we hope to secure a sustainable health and care system that is for the needs of our citizens in the 21st century by ensuring that those who believe they can actively contribute are given a platform to at least try.”
DHI works extensively with the Scottish Government, NHS, Local Government, Academic Institutions, Commercial organisations (SMEs through to Enterprise-level organisations) and Scottish Citizens, who are at the heart of what they do and why they do it. This approach has led to the development, adoption, and scale of projects like The Scottish Capsule Programme (SCOTCAP) and DHI assets have contributed to the overall architecture for Scotland’s Covid-19 Test & Protect system, as well as several of the current health and care service remobilisation initiatives. Learn more about our response to Covid-19.
The centre has a proven track record on the delivery of next-generation digital services focussed on empowering citizens to make better health and wellbeing choices, accessing services on their own terms, and delivering more of their own care.
DHI are expanding their international reach and have communicated ‘‘If you’re interested in learning more or collaborating with us, we encourage you to Join Our Network and share your interests so we can align you with the best opportunities within our digital health and care sector.’’
The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme is supported by over 60 partners, Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre are one such partners. They help support, shape, and develop the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme. Our partner network provides opportunities for our Clinical Entrepreneurs including internships, access to NHS test and evaluation sites, academic and commercial, knowledge exchange and connection to customers.
If your organisation is interested in Partnership opportunities, please contact the team at cep@aru.ac.uk