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Innovation Hub at Wansford surgery

There is long history of innovation at Wansford and our latest project is called STATEMENTS OF CLINICAL NEED (SOCN) with sponsorship provided by the Technology Strategy Board and the NHS National Innovation Centre,

The aim of participation is to make available the expertise and experience of clinicians to guide innovation in health technologies

 The 'Statements of Clinical Need' (SOCN) is being established to enable clinicians to identify the most important problems and deficiencies in currently available therapeutic applications. 

The main aim of the SOCN initiative is to align invention and innovation with the needs of the health service.  If this is achieved, the resulting technologies should have a shorter and more efficient innovation pathway, and be more likely to be adopted, with benefits to patients, clinicians, the health service and industry.   The SOCN project is timely, in that it provides one solution to some of the problems identified in the Cooksey Report, the HITF Strategic Implementation Report, and the NHS Review from Lord Darzi, which all highlight the importance of innovation to the health service, and the need to improve the rates of adoption of new technologies. 

These 'Statements of Clinical Need' will be managed through a website  (www.clinicalneed.com) which will also link through to the innovation infrastructure within the NHS Innovation Centre (www.nic.nhs.uk) to bring together a virtual community of clinicians, industrialists, and academics - anyone who is interested in health technology R&D - in order to identify and find solutions to those issues that are clinically most important.

Wansford surgery has become the first Primary care early adopter site and we have planned meetings to take this forward. We have had one in house meeting, there are some meetings with Patient Participation Groups planned and in September we have a launch meeting at the Haycock Hotel - outlined below. Anyone wishing to attend the evening needs to book by contacting Dr Amrit Takhar at Wansford surgery.
You can also post comments by visiting an Innovation blog which has just been setup at http://clinicalneeds.blogspot.com

Innovation Evening for Health professionals on Tuesday 23rd September 2008

Innovation Evening:   Programme Time:     7.00 – 9.00 pm Date:       23rd September Venue:   Haycock Hotel, Wansford   6.30 - 7.00           Refreshments 7.00 - 7.10          Welcome and introductions Dr Amrit Takhar 7.10 - 7.30          Health Enterprise East                              Katherine Evan-Roberts                              Robert Donald 7.30 - 7.50          Statements of Clinical Need Project                              Noreen Caine: NHS Communications Lead                              John Egan:  Project Manager 7.50 - 8.00          Questions 8.00 - 8.45          Identifying Clinical Needs – Group Discussion 8.45 - 9.00           Summing Up and Follow-up

Please contact DR Amrit Takhar to book a place

There are several ways in which organisations and individuals can become involved.  For example, you might:-

1. Become an Early Adopter site for Statement of Clinical Need
2. Enable direct contact to key personnel, who are involved in healthcare provision
3. Provide a Statement of Clinical Need to be posted on www.clinicalneed.com
4. Collaborate on a clinical meeting to develop SOCN content in a specific clinical area.

One in house meeting provided some ideas for consideration but we really want to open this up to the wider primary care community as well as planning a Patients forum meeting to gather patient perspectives on some of the ideas. Remember the focus of this project is mainly medical devices or technologies rather than drug treatments.

1. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a potential Specialist Challenge with a view to finding improved/more convenient ways of treating with light.  There was also interest in developing this into a research study comparing the different therapies available.
2. Currently available treatment room desk lamps are unstable and need improvement in design
3. A miniature wound irrigator spray
4. An x-ray machine for use in general practice
5. Ophthalmoscope alternative/improvement in design

Our key contact for this project is Noreen Caine who is SOCN NHS communications lead ( Noreen is an experienced Health service manager who used to run the Papworth Research programme)