BACKGROUND

Technology Innovation Transforming Child Health (TITCH) is a national healthcare technology network that has been established to support the development of technology solutions to help improve childrens’ healthcare.[1]

It recognised the need to bring together child health and industry experts to look at ways in which innovative technology can be developed to improve and advance healthcare for children and young people.

NHSA SUPPORT

The NHSA was approached by TITCH to facilitate an event to bring the right people together to further discussions. A high-level event was held in London bringing together academics, clinicians, funding body representatives, industry partners, colleagues from the NHS and national regulatory bodies.

The morning session highlighted current issues in child healthcare technology development and examples of how new innovations and infrastructure can support and transform child healthcare delivery.  Opportunities for securing funding were presented along with the existing NIHR Clinical Research Infrastructure available to academics, clinicians and industry partners.

RESULTS

It was agreed that TITCH, alongside organisations like the NHSA, could play a key role in helping to streamline different sources of investment and influence national policy to enable children faster access to technology.

It was suggested more could be done by organisations like TITCH to align clinical unmet needs for children and young people using the NHS, with both innovative and proven healthcare technologies. The power of the tertiary teaching hospitals that form ‘TITCH’ mean that this forum can be used as a powerful and influential platform for conveying new ideas for enabling novel technology innovation and for promoting accelerated access to technology for children, in the UK and internationally.  Through this activity there is now an aim to create a funding roadmap for technology innovation in paediatric medicine in the UK.

Working collaboratively with other relevant organisations TITCH and NHSA will develop a strategy to enable a new influential voice to be heard by with national policymakers for paediatrics and child health.