The CW Innovation programme, led by Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and its charity CW+, was launched today aimed at improving patient care and addressing some of the real-time challenges that healthcare organisations face today.
The partners have been developing a pipeline of ‘test and scale’ innovation projects to be rolled out across the trust and disseminated throughout the NHS stakeholder network.
Examples include the UK’s-largest study of wearable monitoring technology; the UK’s-first cancer clinic of its kind fast-tracking patients with clinical suspicions of cancer; and the Mum & Baby app that is now being rolled out across the North West London catchment and to other national NHS maternity centres.
The launch today marks a new phase in the trust’s commitment to design, attract, embed, and evaluate new initiatives and technologies to transform operational efficiency and, critically, patient care and the patient experience.
We have seen first-hand how the teams here have developed a pro-active and open environment, enabling the introduction and evaluation of the latest clinical and digital innovations
“ CW Innovation is designed to connect the frontline clinical and operational staff and partner organisations, both in and outside of the NHS”, said Lesley Watts, trust chief executive.
“We strongly believe it will lead to improvements in the care we provide to our patients and the way we run our hospitals.
“With over 70 projects in our pipeline, an increasing number of external partners, and a growing innovation team; we are excited to officially launch CW Innovation today.”
By delivering a portfolio of evaluated, real-world projects, the programme will be the only one of its kind in a UK acute hospital setting, and a unique resource bridging the public and commercial healthcare sectors.
“We are a Global Digital Exemplar, a founding partner of DigitalHealth.London Accelerator, and we run nationally-recognised, award-winning services”, said Chris Chaney, chief executive of CW+.
“We are well placed to respond to the increasing demand to discover, test and adopt innovative, scalable solutions that support the delivery of better patient-centred, more-responsive and cost-effective care.
CW Innovation is a unique programme that we believe can make a real difference to patient care in our trust and across the NHS as a whole.”
At the launch event, Dr Nick Scott-Ram, chief of srrategic development at Sensyne Health, one of the trust’s innovation partners, said: “We are delighted to be working with the trust to analyse anonymised patient data using Sensyne Health’s clinical artificial intelligence technology, and collaborate in digital health and biomedical research to gain new insights to improve the care of patients.
We are well placed to respond to the increasing demand to discover, test and adopt innovative, scalable solutions that support the delivery of better patient-centred, more-responsive and cost-effective care
“We have seen first-hand how the teams here have developed a pro-active and open environment, enabling the introduction and evaluation of the latest clinical and digital innovations.”
And Lord O’Shaughnessy, who served as parliamentary under secretary of state in the Department of Health and Social Care between 2016-2018, and was also speaking at the launch, believes the trust is emerging as a leader in healthcare innovation.
He said: “Chelsea and Westminster has a proven track record as an early-adopter and designer of next-generation services and care tools.
“By evaluating the real-world experience, and by putting the patients first; they have been able to roll out initiatives across NHS services so that more patients and organisations can benefit.”
