The Innovate Awards are delivered in partnership between the Heath Innovation Network and NHS Confederation.
The awards celebrate innovation in the health and care sectors.
Recognising and rewarding innovators is crucial to creating a culture of innovation.
Equally important are the efforts of those working tirelessly to spread innovation, for the benefit of patients across the country.
The 2023 winners
Best Use of Data in Health Innovation
Award category sponsored by Roche
Winner: C2-Ai + Cheshire and Merseyside ICS – Prioritisation of the elective waiting list and prehabilitation
Impact includes saving over 1,000 excess bed-days per 1,000 patients on the PTL, due to less harm being caused and fewer unplanned admissions; up to 15 minute’s consultant administrative time saved per patient per triage, which can be used for clinical duties; a 27% reduction in 52-week waiters during the first six weeks of deployment.
C2-Ai helps hospitals improve patient safety, reduce mortality and complication risk, and clinical outcomes variation, by providing globally unique AI-backed insights.
C2-Ai was also named the Innovation Champion of the Year
Best Workforce Innovation
Award category supported by Qbtech
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals: Using robotic automatic to improve workforce systems.
Impact includes releasing ward managers from the responsibility for updating sickness absence, allowing them to focus on clinical activities;Â and removing a large proportion of human errors for the input into roster and ESR systems.
Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is an acute trust, serving a population of more than 420,000 across South Yorkshire, North Nottinghamshire and the surrounding areas.
Enabling Safer Systems of Care Through Innovation
NHS South Yorkshire ICB, Doncaster: Safer Prescribing of Opioids in Doncaster
Impact includes patients reporting better quality of life with opioid reduction, while clinicians report that their prescribing choices are better informed. In addition, there has been a reduction in overall opioid prescribing by approximately 20%, thereby lowering the risk of drug dependence in the population.
NHS South Yorkshire ICB works as a key partner within the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System to collectively deliver health and care services that meet the needs of the local population.
Excellence in Patient and Public Involvement in Transformation and Innovation
Award category supported by Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK
University of Southampton: Championing patient co-design of an innovative resource to transform cancer genetics care pathways
Impact includes positive feedback from patients about feeling involved and valued in the research, and remaining committed to working together to improve care pathways and patient experience.
The University of Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group, an organisation of 24 top UK universities committed to maintaining the highest research and teaching standards.
Innovation in Helping Address Health Inequalities
Award category sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim
The Real Birth Company: The Real Birth Digital Programme
Impact includes 66.1% of women reporting they had a vaginal birth versus NHS average of 50%, 24% of women used water for birth versus 5% NHS average, and only 15% of women used pethidine as analgesia versus 25% NHS average. All of these bringing cost savings.
The Real Birth Company promotes understanding of birth and choice. It has a nationally accredited training programme for midwives and an antenatal programme for women and their birth partners.
Innovation Spread Award
Award category supported by Pfizer
AHSN &Â Qbtech:Â Focus ADHD: Improving ADHD is diagnoses in children and young people
Impact includes 55,000 patients benefiting, and over 20,500 hours of clinical time being released since March 2023. The release of clinical capacity costs has resulted in a potential saving to the NHS of over £10,000,000, enabling redirection of such valuable resource to other parts of the ADHD care pathway.
Qbtech transforms the lives of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) through objective data to help streamline the diagnosis process.
Innovative Health System of the Year
Award category sponsored by IQVIA
Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System: Continuing to Push the Boundaries around Innovation
Impact includes the development of innovations, such as Maternity Direct, which helps connect pregnant women to their clinical teams, and the use of virtual reality headsets to reduce health inequalities in accessing secondary care for patients with learning disability and autism.
Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System is a partnership between the organisations that meet the health and care needs of people across the region.
Net Zero Innovation of the Year
Open Medical: Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust Achieves Remarkable Carbon Emission Savings with PathpointⓇ eTrauma and VFC
Impact includes the carbon emissions saved by the trust’s orthopaedic trauma department. In 2022, 44,332 kg of CO2 emissions was saved by ensuring the safe discharge of patients, thereby preventing unnecessary trips to the clinic.
Open Medical specialises in developing and implementing bespoke, end-to-end, digital patient pathways and clinical workflow solutions, for all specialities, across all care settings.
Outstanding Collaboration With Industry
Award category sponsored by AstraZeneca
Definition Health & Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust: Adoption of a digital solution to recover from COVID-19 and transform surgical pathways
Impact includes saving 300,000 pages of paper in less than one year by switching to a digital file sharing system. This results in an estimated saving of £96,000 per annum.
Definition Health develops digital patient pathways to improve outcomes, increase efficiency, and enhance the patient experience.
Outstanding Contribution to Population Health Through Innovation
Eastern AHSN (EAHSN), Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) and BFB Labs: The power of 3: an AHSN, a NHS Trust and a Tech developer
Impact includes high levels of access, engagement, and improvement in youth mental health with 78% of parents reporting an improvement in their child’s anxiety.
BFB Labs help young people build lifelong skills to self-manage their mental health through non-stigmatising, highly engaging and evidence based digital therapeutic interventions.
The Diversity In Innovation Award
Award category supported by ABHI
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust: Use of oVRcome Virtual Reality Headsets to reduce social anxiety and phobias associated with hospital visits in patients with Learning Disability and Autism in Mid and South Essex
Impact includes the reduction seen in negative perceptions of various aspects of healthcare environments, as well as increase in feelings of safety and comfort in these environments.
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust provides acute healthcare services to 1.2m people in Mid Essex, South East Essex, and South West Essex.
Sponsors and supporters of the Innovate Awards 2023
A huge thank you to all of our 2023 sponsors and supporters, whose backing helped us to run the awards in recognition of some of the most impactful and important innovations in health and care:
Innovate Awards 2024
Full details about the 2024 awards will be published in due course. If you wish to receive any other information about the awards, please email Annie Palmer
