As part of our business support, the eHealth Cluster is hosting a series of workshops at iLinks 15, a conference bringing together leading innovators in healthcare. Based in the Digital Innovation Zone, a few of the key companies who are part of the cluster, including Citrus Suite, Red Ninja, Digital Creativity in Disability and Damibu are showcasing their products, IPs and ideas for supporting health and social care through technology.
First, notes from a keynote speaker, Gideon Ben Tovim, Chair of the North West Coast Academic Health Science Network, having previously served as Chair of the Liverpool NHS Primary Care Trust and Chair of NHS Merseyside. He is also Chair of Nature Connected, the Liverpool City Region Local Nature Partnership.
The value of partnership and how digital intervention can keep people healthy and well
The North West Coast is incredibly important in terms of building a partnership of those who can support innovation in healthcare. There is, says Gideon Ben Tovim, a “centre of excellence in the north west coast”.
“There are 40 healthcare trusts, enterprise partnerships, business centre presentation and significant partnerships with a lot of potential. There Is great work that goes on here and our role is key in that. The NHS does brilliant work, academics do brilliant work but it isn’t spread out quickly enough. Our job is to bring those people together and breakdown some of the silos we all know about”.
He sees the role of the NWC AHSN to help “tackle health inequalities, we have significant health inequalities, both urban and rural and we want to bring investment and jobs to the whole of the north west coast”.
There is a level of expertise within the region to support this development.
“Digital and creative are really significant growth areas; we have great strength in those areas, significantly in life sciences, and this provides an enormous potential for our collaborative work”.
The key issues work is focusing on is data and data sharing, crucial to the ability of health care to support both clinicians and patients.
“Across the whole of our patch there is some great work going on, through iLinks, More Independent, Record Exchange in Lancashire to integrate health and social care allowing patients and people to input their own ideas. Creating a platform of interoperability across the whole of the north west coast, trying to support all of that work to make more of the capacity and skill(here)”.
So supporting the “Digital Health Ecosystem” is vital. Connecting SMEs with European partners as well as those in the wider region, the priority is improving health through record sharing, allowing people to have direct access to the information themselves, using technology to support people to be more independent and to have a better use of the technology available.
“Digital interventions have to be appropriate, it has to be linked to patient need, there is a level of need in the population and the focus must be on appropriate digital interventions helping to keep as many people as possible healthy and well”.
The goal for the wider north west, as well as Liverpool, is to help facilitate this and to build partnerships
“We all want to see digital advances made available to as many people as possible. For the next few years there’s a big (opportunity). The NHS has a bible called the Five Year Forward View that really talks about exploiting the innovation evolution and digital care. I think think the quality of the work I have been privileged to see across the whole patch suggests we can talk about a centre of excellence in digital health across the north west coast”.