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Upcoming events
The Office for Budgetary Responsibility estimates that the UK will spend £50 billion on debt interest payments this year. This is equivalent to the annual turnover of the UK Life Science sector of pharmaceutical, medical technology and medical biotechnology companies. Reducing the debt will come not just by squeezing public spending, but also by growing the economy as this brings higher tax revenues.
AHSNs are here to accelerate the growth of the UK Life Sciences sector and help Health & Social Care improve health and wellbeing outcomes through innovation.
The SBRI (Small Business Research Initiative) programme is one of the tools to deliver this ‘innovation, health and wealth’ improvement. SBRI gives development grants to the most promising industry innovations so that the public sector gets more innovative ways of meeting its needs.
Over the Summer, KSS and Wessex AHSNs accessed COPD champions from their clinical communities to create the brief, encouraging grant applications from Industry with ideas to provide ‘better for less’ care for people living with COPD. On 8 October, local companies have the opportunity to meet with the AHSN and the COPD clinical champions who are looking for new innovations. Further information is available from South East Health Technologies Alliance.
On 6 November, the AHSN host our second overseas guest speaker in a session supported by The Health and Europe Centre. Jean Gelissen from Philips and Health and Wellbeing Leader at EIT ICT Labs in The Netherlands, will share his experience of building effective collaborations between Industry, Academia, Health & Social Care in an early evening session with networking opportunities and the chance to hear the latest from the AHSN. For more information on this Gatwick seminar, please contact Amy Semple, at The Health and Europe Centre.
The following day, on 7 November, we’re really keen to get a strong NHS and LA presence at a briefing session on Horizon2020, the EU research grants which will be open to applications in January. Whilst UK universities receive large EU grants, other sectors regularly miss this opportunity. Come on 7 November and hear pitches for projects going forward seeking NHS and LA collaborators. For further information, click here.
Kind regards
Guy Boersma
Managing Director
Opportunities
Clinical Academic Career PhD studentship for Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals
The University of Brighton is working with partner organisations to offer a route into the Clinical Academic Career Programme for Nurses, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals. The university is pleased to offer two opportunities: a jointly funded clinical academic appointment and a funded postdoctoral secondment. Further information is in the attached.
Publications
Monitor’s review of NHS foundation trusts’ 2013/14 annual plans
Monitor requires each NHS foundation trust board to submit an annual plan and quarterly or monthly reports. These are used to assess risk on a forward-looking basis and to hold boards of foundation trusts to account.
Click here for the full publication.
News
G8 dementia summit: have your say on improving research
The Department of Health is inviting people to give their views about dementia research in the run-up to the G8 dementia summit on 11 December.
NIHR showcases clinical research helping people with dementia
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is showcasing some of the cutting-edge clinical research that could bring new hope to dementia patients and their families.
One third of A&E patients ‘do not need to be there’
Up to a third of A&E patients could be treated elsewhere in the NHS but do not know where to go for appropriate care, NHS England’s director for acute episodes of care has said. Professor Keith Willett said that too many patients did not know where to seek medical care “because the system did not obviously make itself available to them”. He said that between 15 – 30 per cent of people in A&E could be treated in general practice. Professor Willett said reducing A&E numbers was particularly urgent to reinforce the emergency workforce by attracting more trainees. Professor Willett is currently assisting NHS England medical director Sir Bruce Keogh in a major review of urgent and emergency care.
Hospitals asked to calculate ‘needless’ deaths
The Guardian reports that from April, hospital trusts will each be asked to check the case notes of about 100 patients who died while undergoing treatment, in order to calculate how many died “needlessly”. The plans have been put forward by Nick Black, professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was asked by NHS England to investigate the relationship between calculated “excess mortality rates” and preventable deaths in hospitals. Professor Black said the idea was not to persecute any individuals but to identify “organisational failure.”