Today, the Northern Health Science Alliance once again embarked on a journey to Amsterdam with a purpose in mind – to connect with healthtech experts and share knowledge on how to create strategies, with a common goal in sight – to better the unmet needs of the North of England’s 16 million patient population.

Our team, along with various alliance members, are at HLTH Europe, which attracts key decision-makers and influencers across the entire European health ecosystem, including providers, pharmaceutical companies, startups, investors, and health tech companies. HLTH Europe is an important platform for connecting industry leaders, showcasing innovation, and collaborating on the future of healthcare.

We were delighted to host a panel event on collaborating with NHS Trusts for trials, evaluations and procurement, alongside experts from our member organisations Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals of Liverpool Group NHS Trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, as well as NIHR’s Devices for Dignity research team.

The event allowed attendees to find out more about the North of England as a global research and innovation hub, exploring strategies for successful collaboration with NHS innovation teams, and for healthtech companies to maximise their chances of success when engaging with NHS Trusts.

Our Chief Executive Hannah Davies explained the North of England’s position in terms of innovation and spoke about the role of the NHSA across the region and our successes with our alliance members.

Dr Dan Hawcutt, Clinical Research Facility Director, at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust spoke about how successful innovation teams operate, with single points of access and an innovation front door to a team who can pull in the right clinicians. Dan also touched on how innovators should consider children as their target patient, even if their product design did not initially have children in mind.

Chris Herbert, Director of Operations: Research and Innovation at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, touched on how doctors are not the only clinicians who can drive innovation forward. Physiotherapists and nurses are crucial in recognising and championing innovation, so innovators must always keep an open mind to who they’re targeting.

Liz Pryde, Head of Operations at NIHR HealthTech Research Centre Long-term conditions (Devices for Dignity), spoke about the importance of early engagement, and how it’s crucial that innovators start conversations from the beginning with Trusts and R&I networks, so that a relationship and plan is co-developed from the very beginning.

Vinoth Sankar, Consultant in Critical Care at University Hospitals of Liverpool Group NHS Trust, explained how companies need to be open to transformation with their product, and remember the ‘e’ word – evidence. Without evidence there’s no progression into a business case, and companies must demonstrate a strong evidence set.

The event was an incredible success, with around 100 attendees in a packed-out room, eager to hear from the wealth of knowledge on our panel.

The panel gave some excellent advice to attendees, and here’s just a few top pieces of advice for innovators that we can share from the event:

1. Put the patient at the heart of what you do – and remember that clinicians and innovation teams are ‘problem owners’ who understand the complexities of healthcare.
2. Innovation teams are likely to give you feedback on your product to help transform it. Your business model must account for your product adapting and changing for the benefit of patients.
3. Understand levels of innovation – remember that the product is only one level. Your application is more likely to succeed if you wrap a service model around it. Engage with clinicians to understand these levels.

We always welcome contact from innovators, and if you would like to get in touch about our panel event please contact charlotte.thompson@thenhsa.co.uk