Newsletter July 2020
Welcome to our monthly newsletter
Funded through the Chief Scientist’s Office, Health Innovation South East Scotland (HISES) forms part of national network created to deliver the Scottish Government’s vision to utilise the innovation process to deliver a healthier and wealthier nation for the future.
Formed through a collaboration of three NHS Boards — Borders, Fife and Lothian, with the latter taking on the role of lead host Board, HISES has a pivotal role in delivering innovative solutions to the health and social challenges, both regionally and nationally. Need to contact us? Get in touch
Innovations@nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk
IN YOUR NEWS
NIHR New Funding Call
The NIHR Policy Research Programme (NIHR PRP) invites applications for research to inform the policy response to challenges posed by COVID-19; and to capture learning arising from the pandemic. The research specification document sets out the need for research in specific topic areas to inform medium- to longer-term policy decisions for health and social care resulting from COVID-19.
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ELVIS COVID-19 Study
The University of Edinburgh is running a study to find out if a simple remedy you can do at home without any drugs can help people with COVID-19 get better faster by easing the symptoms of the virus. This study is for any adult in Scotland who has developed COVID-19 symptoms in the last 48 hours, is isolating at home and has not been advised to go to hospital.
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vCreate Used in Adult Critical Care
Covid-19 pandemic has brought challenges to critical care. Restricted visiting has impacted on communication and caused distress for patients, families and staff. NHS Lothian has implemented a new communication tool – vCreate – to adult critical care. vCreate is an online application which allows to send pre-recorded video clips and photos of patients to their family members. Implementing a brand-new method of communication into critical care in the midst of a pandemic was a significant challenge. However, they had overwhelming positive feedback from staff and family members and now intend to evaluate its use.
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Heriot-Watt EPSRC Impact Acceleration Award
Mauro Dragone from Heriot-Watt University has been recently awarded £50k for his ‘Ambient Assisted Living’ project aimed at providing a platform to accelerate the adoption and accessibility of pioneering technology solutions relevant to ambient assisted living and related application areas such as pervasive healthcare, telemedicine, telehealth and telecare to support the care of vulnerable people, whose urgent need is exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. The AAL project is set to start on the 1st of July and will last 10 months.
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MDMC Website Launch
Funded by the 2014-2020 European Structural Fund programmes via the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by Heriot-Watt university, the Medical Device Manufacturing Centre (MDMC) provide a free service to Scottish SMES in helping them developing and manufacturing medical devices to enable them to undertake first-in-patient-studies. The MDMC offer expert manufacturing engineering and access to manufacturing facilities and regulatory advice, in order to assist SMEs in the translation of medical device concepts through to small batch of commercial prototypes. Their website is now live.
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vCreateNeuro Applied in Children with Epilepsy
care in children during COVID-19 has been applied in NHS Lothian at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. vCreateNeuro is a secure online application that allows parents to transfer videos of their children’s seizures safely to the Paediatric Neurosciences Team for them to diagnose, treat and monitor patients during COVID-19. Previously this was provided by parents attending to the hospital in person. This needed tool was implemented in May 2020. So far 170 videos has been uploaded and the feedback from staff and parents has been positive. A full report will be published in the coming weeks.
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Type 1 Diabetes Peer Supporter in NHS Borders
In 2019 a new role was created to support Type 1 Dia-betes patients in NHS Borders. Type 1 Diabetes Peer Supporter (T1PS) volunteers are supported by the Lead Diabetes Specialist Nurse who identifies patients and families that require peer support. This is the first role of its type in Scotland for supporting Type 1 Diabetics. Initially this role was to support patients and their fam-ilies in a variety of different settings within the commu-nity and hospital. The pilot programme was due to start when COVID-19 struck. However, NHS Borders adapted the concept and are currently testing virtual peer support using mobile phones. NHS Borders is also investigating the use of iPads with the ‘Near Me’ se-cure link to further develop a virtual model that can cope with current circumstances.
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CivTech 5.0 Launches
CivTech 5.0 Innovation Flow launched on Friday 10th of July. There are ten Challenges, from a wide range of government directorates and public sector organisa-tions, tackling a wide variety of problems the public sec-tor would like to solve. Innovators have until the 28th of July to submit proposals, and the successful applicants will work with their Challenge Sponsors through the Ex-ploration and Accelerator stages from September, re-leasing prototype products in January 2021.
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