A handful of digital projects have been allocated shares of £100,000 in the latest round of funding from the Health Innovation Network (HIN).
They account for four of the five from 32 bids to receive between £10,000 and £30,000 each to help justify a wider roll out in dealing with major health challenges.
HIN, the academic health science network for south London, said the money will support 12-month pilots to produce evidence of their impact.
One project, lead by Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, is aimed at enabling inflammatory bowel disease patients to self-manage their care and communications with clinical teams through the Zesty digital portal. It will involve the trial of self-monitoring tools integrated with their electronic patient records.
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is developing a digital urine screening tool, Healthy IO, for early identification of chronic kidney disease. This is intended to support people with diabetes and other long term conditions.
AI for musculoskeletal
The trust is leading another project for the use of artificial intelligence through an app to support people with musculoskeletal problems. It contributes to the Good Boost rehabilitation programme for people to carry out personalised exercise routines.
The final digital project, led by St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is producing a self-management app for acute back and leg pain. Name getUBetter, it will be prescribed to patients discharged from the trust’s emergency department.
A fifth initiative is led by Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and involves a sports development programme to support adults with learning disabilities.
HIN’s programme director for innovation, Lesley Soden, said: “This funding is crucial to kickstart innovation projects to test out different innovations and new ways of partnership working. NHS teams often struggle to find substantial funding to pilot new ideas in real world settings to demonstrate the kind of results they need for support for wider roll out across regions and potentially nationally.
“We are so pleased that our previous grant winners in 2020 have gone on to deliver innovative health and care projects, with a handful being nominated for national awards this year. For the 2021 winners we’re looking forward to working with these teams to prove their concepts and demonstrate real world application to enable greater adoption across the health and social care system.”
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