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Clinicians and Academics
Using our extensive knowledge of the healthtech innovation pipeline to validate needs and accelerate equitable access to healthcare technologies
Let's Work Together
What We Offer
We aim to develop technologies to assist people with long-term health conditions to live well for longer, maintaining independence and dignity and the ability to enjoy life fully.
Unmet Needs
- Patients and carers report frustration due to health professionals addressing their health problems out of context with other health issues and their lives overall
- Some people from minority ethnic communities and individuals who can't afford technology told us they have felt excluded from research and access to health technology
The HRC will therefore work jointly, to recognise the connections between peoples' physical, mental and social needs - and the interactions between these. This will be achieved through connected clinical and crosscutting support themes, developed in response to the linked challenges experienced by people we work with.
Awards
HeadUp Collar
Global Award for Patient Driven Research
CognoSpeak
Made with Patients Award
Devices4Dignity
Finalists in Excellence in PPIE- The Innovate Awards 2023
Our Impact
628
Collaboration requests
306
Grants
197
Projects
476
Events attended
£61M
Funding leveraged
Benefits of Collaborating With Us
By partnering with us our expertise in medtech innovation could benefit your technology development by:
- De-risking innovative projects
- Identifying and addressing barriers to medtech development and adoption
- Identifying the best people and organisations to work with
- Reducing timescales to market
- Access to large clinical expert network an the wider NHS
- Access to industry partners
- Access to community groups, charities, lived experience groups and underserved populations
- Ensuring that your innovation addresses a real health need
- Helping businesses to get more from their R&D spend
- Access to large clinical expert network an the wider NHS
- Access to industry partners
- Access to community groups, charities, lived experience groups and underserved populations
What We Offer
D4D is experienced in developing innovative products and services, and is uniquely positioned to access clinical and patient expertise to provide meaningful knowledge, tailored recommendations, and facilitation to technology development projects by offering:
- Project oversight and direction
- Establishment of project teams including clinical, patient, academic and design partners as required
- Concept validation and scoping of clinical 'fit'
- Clinical evidence planning, from proof of concept to large scale trials
- Regulatory guidance and strategy development
- Patient and public involvement and engagement
- Dissemination planning
- Support with funding applications
- Market analysis including proof of market
- Exploitation strategy development
- Adoption and implementation planning
- Relationship building and signposting within the NHS, health and social care, and technology sectors
- Intellectual Property guidance
- Access to NIHR funding calls
- Publication support
Our Vision
- Work to reduce inequalities in health and social care, ensuring end-user engagement is threaded throughout development to make technologies that are fit for purpose and widely used.
- Work with industry partners to safely but swiftly develop technologies that are easy for all to access and use. This will reduce the waiting period between identified need and available product.
- To build capacity into the NHS and industry, to train and support healthcare professionals and business partners in health technology co-production for mutual benefit.
- To build sustainability into technology development, reducing waste and protecting the environment.
Our Approach
We involve people regardless of age, ability, background, ethnicity or gender as fair and accurate representation is key to designing health technologies in partnership with future users. This ensures we understand clearly:
- Our collaborators and the issues they face
- What all future users (public and professional) of any technology feel are the unmet needs
- How devices should look, work and feel
- How to produce technology which is useful, usable and easy and available
We recognise that technologies must assist people to manage their health condition while dealing with many other challenges (including pain, difficulty doing everyday tasks, mental distress, stigma, deprivation and isolation). These challenges overlap and can compound each other, so the work we do will recognise and address these and other interactions.
Our Partners
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We are hosted by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and officially partnered NHS Trusts include Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
- Partnered Universities include Leeds University, Coventry University, University of Sheffield, University of Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam University
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PhD Studentships
- 2021, Joint funded PhD with Coventry University, ‘The role of design and usability in the adoption of digital self-management technology’ by Rachel Hughson-Gill (Coventry woman dreams up clothing line for diabetics - BBC News)
- More joint PhDs with Coventry University in the process, starting at 2025
- Support with NIHR Fellowships projects
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Since 2021 we have hosted the Healthcare Science Innovation Fellowships, funded by NHS England
- Each year focused on different NHS priorities
- More information here
