The inaugural winners have been named in the new awards from the AHSN Network and NHS Confederation, following an award ceremony attended by almost 400 NHS leaders, innovators and partners.

Technology thought-leader and Countdown arithmetician Anne-Marie Imafidon, hosted the ceremony, which provided a fantastic celebration of excellence in health and care transformation.

With more than 190 entries received, in the first year of the awards, the expert panel of judges interrogated and scored the entries and deemed the following entries as outstanding:

Winner

Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – Towards a Net Zero carbon supply chain.

Highly Commended

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust – Reusable facemasks for a Net Zero health system.

Joint Winners

  • Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership – Essex Vax Van: engaging and communicating with diverse audiences to drive impact.
  • Whittington Health NHS Trust – See ME First.

Joint Winners

  • Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust co-production – Rethink Mental Illness.
  • UCLPartners – Living with Covid recovery.

Highly Commended

MyCareBudget – co-production with unpaid carers to support long term complex care needs.

Winner

Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust – ChatHealth.

Highly Commended

  • Health Innovation Manchester, Medical Data Solutions and Services, Stroke Association, Innovation Agency (NWC AHSN), Yorkshire and Humber AHSN,
  • AHSN for the North East and North Cumbria – Acute Bundle of Care for IntraCerebral Haemorrhage (ABC-ICH).

Winners

St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Patchwork Health – Establishing the Northwest Collaborative Bank, the largest in the UK.

Highly Commended

Greater Manchester Combined Authority – eCare.

Joint winners

  • Wythenshawe, Northenden and Brooklands Primary Care Network – We Are One: migrant health in temporary accommodation.
  • Bromley GP Alliance – Bromley homeless shelter winter healthcare clinic.

Highly Commended

  • Primary Integrated Community Services (PICS) – Tackling health inequalities through opioid deprescribing, the Mid-Notts project.
  • Peninsular Child Disability Research Unit, University of Exeter Medical School – Healthy Parent Carer Programme.
  • Written Medicine and London North West Healthcare NHS Trust – Reducing language barriers with bilingual medication information.

Joint Winners

  • Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership – Anchoring Southend: putting our community first.
  • UCLPartners – UCLPartners Proactive Care Frameworks: optimising care for people with long term conditions.

Highly Commended

Nuffield Health – COVID-19 rehabilitation programme.

Winner

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust – Innovation and intelligent automation: a new team for a new way to bring innovation to the whole system.

Highly Commended

  • Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership – Driving innovation across the Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership.
  • Cardiff and Vale University Health Board – The Dragon’s Heart Institute.

Winner

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and ELAROS 24/7 Limited – the world’s first validated digital system for the initial assessment, triage, management, monitoring, and rehabilitation of patients with Long COVID.

Highly Commended

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust – Lantern: an innovation solution from an innovative collaboration.

Winner

Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership – Enabling safer care with Raizer emergency lifting chairs.

Highly Commended

Cheshire and Merseyside Health and Care Partnership, NHS Midlands, and Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit – Hypertension: digital enablers supporting home blood pressure monitoring in General Practice.

As well as the 10 categories open to entries, there was also a grand prix prize for the overall ‘winner or winners’ for Innovation Champion of the Year. The winner of this award was selected from across all the winners by NHS England Director of Innovation, Research and Life Sciences and Chief Executive of the Accelerated Access Collaborative, Matt Whitty.

The winner of the Innovation Champion of Year Award in 2022 is:

Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust – ChatHealth.

Richard Stubbs, Vice Chair of the AHSN Network and Chief Executive of Yorkshire and Humber AHSN, who has led the coordination of the awards, said: “Well done to all the teams and organisations named as winners or highly commended in the Innovate Awards.

“It is really important that we continuously recognise, showcase and celebrate the fantastic and innovative activity being delivered across the NHS. We are delighted with the response that we’ve had to this year’s awards both in terms of the volume of entries and also the impressively high standard of the applications. Recognising and celebrating these great case studies through the awards is only the start of the work. We also need to make sure that the learning spreads to everywhere in the NHS where it has the potential to improve patient care.”

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive at NHS Confederation, added: “The past few years have been challenging for everyone working in health and care, so it is more important than ever to recognise and celebrate the efforts and achievements of health and care teams.

“These awards have celebrated the exceptional efforts in helping transform health and care. They give the recognition, acknowledgement and appreciation individuals, teams and organisations deserve for leading the way in health and care innovation.

“Thank you to all those teams that took time to enter the awards this year – we hope to build on the success of this year’s awards next year.”

Thank you to the award headline sponsors IQVIA; and the category supporters Boehringer Ingelheim; NHS Employers; Big Health; Healthy.IO; and North of England Commissioning Support Unit; and Roche.

For more information about all the innovations and initiatives that featured in this year’s awards, visit the Innovate Awards website.

Following the success of this year’s event, organisers at the AHSN Network and NHS Confederation have confirmed the intention for the awards to return in 2023. More information about next year’s awards will be issued soon via the Innovate Awards website.

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