Alder Hey Children’s NHS FT launches start-up accelerator programme

Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has launched its first start-up accelerator programme to give tech start-ups the chance to trial their initiatives in the hospital.

Echoing the Digital Health London accelerator programme, the Innovation Lab aims to discover solutions that can back Alder Hey’s mission to provide exceptional support to its young patients and their families and transform paediatric healthcare.

The Alder Hey Innovation Lab will run for 14 weeks with two sprints planned. The initial 10-week sprint will focus on clinical validation, while a further 4-week sprint will test the commercial validation of the solutions.

The programme is run in partnership with corporate innovation specialist L Marks and is sponsored by DPD and Regatta. The sponsor companies will provide hands-on support during the 4-week commercial validation trials.

During the initial 10-week sprint, start-ups involved with the programme will be given access to trust stakeholders in order to draw on their expertise as well as test out their solutions.

Alder Hey is looking to collaborate with tech starts up working towards two key innovation opportunities:

• Bringing UX to the patient experience; gamification and the child wow factor – Alder Hey is searching for solutions that can engage their young patients and help with their overall experience at the hospital.
• Hospital Optimisation; rethinking the end-to-end journey – solutions should have a patient, clinician and staff-centric approach and could include innovations to improve patient management, workflow management or clinician support.

For both areas simple and streamlined solutions are being sought, that can be easily implemented hospital-wide and meet key stakeholder needs.

Future categories, including future of training, non-invasive diagnostics, surgical safety and a wildcard are planned for the future. Successful applicants will be invited to pitch early in November and the programme will commence in January 2022.

Interested start-ups can find out more information at the Alder Hey Innovation Lab website. Applications must be made by September 25 2021.