On World Cancer Day, 4 February, Scottish Healthcare Innovations Ltd (SHIL) is encouraging NHS Scotland staff to submit ideas for improving the delivery of healthcare.
The call is also to mark the health tech company’s 20th anniversary.
SHIL specialises in ‘identifying and developing new ideas to help solve problems and address needs in health and social care’, and works with the NHS, industry and academia to help bring innovations from healthcare professionals to life.
The campaign for World Cancer Day revolves around the idea that everyone has the ‘ability to make an impact, large or small, and that together we can make real progress in reducing the global impact of cancer’.
So, the company is asking anyone across health and social care in Scotland – who has an idea that could positively impact on cancer diagnosis, treatment or care – to submit ideas for review.
Any ideas or innovations submitted will then be assessed by the SHIL team, before those with the ‘greatest potential’ begin to be fast tracked. Scottish Healthcare Innovations has already brought more than 250 inventions ‘to fruition’ across the healthcare sector, with recent examples including the ‘SARUS CPR hood’, which enables safe resuscitation by ‘providing a simple barrier to disease transmission risks faced by CPR personnel’, as well as further development of the ‘SCRAM Bag’, which is for use by the military to support safer airway management.
Executive Chair Graham Watson, says: “NHS staff have played an invaluable role in healthcare innovation over the last 20 years. We are thankful for their contributions and believe that they can continue driving improvements across the spectrum of healthcare.
“On World Cancer Day we want to stress the importance of healthcare innovation and, for us, that is about fully realising the potential within our NHS and broader life sciences sector – harnessing the vast talent pool across Scotland to provide better treatment and care.”
SHIL’s aims for 2022 include NHS priority areas, and the organisation will be launching further targeted innovation calls over the next year.
