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Starworks - Innovations for young people in prosthetics
Key Aims:
Prosthetics for children are not fit for purpose. Children have extremely different needs and wants to adults, however prosthetics do not reflect this. The Starworks network was established to bring children and their families together with key opinion leaders from the NHS, industry, clinical academia and leading National Research Centres early in the development of child prosthetics.
Impact:
The Starworks Network was originally funded via the UK government and then subsequently through NIHR infrastructure funding, led by Devices for Dignity. Centred around the needs of families workshops were held with stakeholders to prioritise their needs and wants. This helped to encourage a balance between a ‘clinical pull’ and a ‘technical push’ to create an energetic environment in which to innovate and partner with industry whilst having children’s desires at the heart of their work.
Through a series of collaborative sandpit events, the Starworks project opened a call for applications to ‘proof of concept’ funding where 10 projects were funded with a total of £400,000 being awarded overall. Since then, a further 6 have received follow on funding worth over “230,000.
The Starworks Network has also created key stakeholder groups such as the Expert Network and Starworks Ambassadors, with patients and families involved in the process.These groups have an impact on patients since it improves patient understanding of research whilst also embedding PPIE and EDI into innovative practice and device creation.
Project Team and Funding: The NIHR HRC in Pediatrics and Child Health.
Starworks – Innovations in prosthetics for young people