11 new innovators tapped to transform England’s NHS through national acceleration

The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) has announced today the 11 high impact innovations joining the national accelerator in 2020. At a launch event chaired by Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director for NHS England and NHS Improvement, the 2020 cohort of Fellows presented their innovations to key stakeholders, including Tony Young, National Clinical Lead for Innovation of NHS England and NHS Improvement, and Nigel Edwards, Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust, both of whom also spoke at the event.

The innovations joining the award-winning NIA offer solutions supporting priority areas for England’s NHS as laid out in the NHS Long Term Plan. Their recruitment follows an international call and rigorous selection process, including review by over 100 clinical, patient and commercial assessors, an informal review by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), interviews, and due diligence. The newly appointed group includes a medically certified smartwatch app capable of detecting atrial fibrillation (AF), a device reducing the angst of parents by enabling faster ADHD diagnosis, and an artificial intelligence (AI) platform bringing patients’ voices to life to improve care.

This marks the fifth year of the NIA, which is an NHS England initiative delivered in partnership with England’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), hosted at UCLPartners. Since 2015, it has supported the uptake and spread of 62 evidence-based innovations across more than 2,210 NHS sites. Independent evaluations report that NIA innovations save the health and social care system £38m a year, conservatively.

Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director for NHS England and NHS Improvement, said: “The NHS Long Term Plan puts the latest technology and innovation at the heart of people’s care and the future of our health service.

“Right across the NHS patients are benefitting from world-beating innovations, spread as part of this programme, and now even more patients will be supported by new tools.”

Piers Ricketts, Chair of the AHSN Network, said: “The NHS Innovation Accelerator is one of the flagship programmes of the AHSN Network. NIA Fellows have made a huge contribution to our health and care system since we started the programme five years ago, and we are proud to have supported these remarkable individuals on their development journey. It is gratifying to see their high-impact innovations gaining traction and visibility through our accelerator programme, and we are delighted that several NIA innovations have now had national impact in the NHS.

"We look forward to working with the new NIA Fellows to help them scale and deploy their innovations across the country for the benefit of patients and the NHS.”

The 11 innovations selected to join the NIA in 2020 are: 

• Fibricheck: A medically certified app (CE Class IIA, FDA approved) capable of the early detection of heart rhythm disorders, such as atrial fibrillation, using a smartphone or smartwatch
  
  
• Health Navigator: AI-guided proactive health coaching to prevent avoidable urgent and emergency care
  
  
• Locum’s Nest: A locum app that connects doctors to locum work in hospitals, while cutting out the inefficient, ineffective and expensive agency middleman
  
  
• Management and Supervision Tool (MaST): A dashboard that uses predictive analytics to generate insights which support staff to deliver high quality, effective mental health care by identifying those people who are most likely to require crisis services
  
  
• MediShout: The world’s first platform to integrate all logistical departments in hospitals, giving clinicians an app to instantly report issues and using AI to predict future problems
  
  
• MyPreOp: A cloud-hosted programme enabling patients to enter, own and share their preoperative assessment information
  
  
• Patient Experience Platform (PEP): AI platform transforming healthcare and improving safety by empowering the digital voice of patients
  
  
• QbTest: A CE-marked, FDA approved medical device that simultaneously measures attention, impulsivity and motor activity to speed up ADHD diagnosis and treatment evaluation
  
  
• RIX Wiki: Software that enables people with learning disabilities to share personal health and care information for effective person-centred support in their communities
  
  
• Safe Steps: Reducing the number of preventable falls in the ageing population through digital, evidence-based interventions
  
  
• The WaterDrop: A low-cost, high impact innovation that enables patients to easily access fluids at any time without needing to call for help to help prevent dehydration and avoidable intravenous drips