Innovation Pipeline vision
This page details what the Innovation Pipeline aims to achieve and how, by working together, we can achieve it.
Why digital health?
The NHS is facing significant and increasing demand. Digital health technologies could help improve the capacity and efficiency of health systems and are urgently needed.
Data is essential to improve population and individual health. At the population level, data are needed to understand how healthcare is used, by whom, and its effectiveness. At the individual level, clinicians use data to decide when a person needs assessment, their diagnosis, future risk, and appropriate tests and treatments. Individual data is rarely useful without population data.
Health and social care generate a wealth of “routine” data from hospitals, GPs and local authorities. This data helps understand clinical need and where innovation is needed to provide more efficient and effective healthcare.
Data obtained in a person’s daily life are essential to understand health, but are not currently used in healthcare. Such “daily life” data include symptoms, mobility, environment, and quality of life. Despite their obvious importance these data are not systematically measured due to a lack of validated and approved technologies.. Consumer devices such as phones, wearables and IoT devices already collect clinically-relevant data.
Innovation and Adoption in Digital Health is challenging. 44% of digital health start-ups have no clinical proof or regulatory approval. Many projects and start-ups do not sufficiently consider clinical need, market data, competitor analysis, IP, regulation, clinical validation, cost effectiveness and NHS commissioning. The South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub will train and support as many projects as possible to a stage where they are investable with training and co-design with PPIE.
What are the data structures we are proposing?
The University of Sheffield's Data Connect will help to combine daily life data and fuse this with routine NHS health and social care data. It offers improved researcher access to health and social care data to enhance research capability and drive innovation. It provides a secure, single point of access to sensitive data held in an accredited, cloud-based, Secure Data Environment
These fused datasets will be analysed using mathematical models and AI to develop new methods and innovations that address clinical unmet needs of our NHS partners.
What will the Innovation Pipeline achieve?
Ultimately, the DHH aims to develop, train, and support a pipeline of Digital Health Innovators, equipping them with the skills and knowledge to obtain further research and commercialisation funding
The Innovation Pipeline aims to get as many projects as possible to a stage where they are investable. Applicants that engage with us will get their project to a stage where you can take it anywhere, through training and Co-Design with PPIE groups.
“The right data, to the right people, at the right time, to inform the right decisions.”
By the end of the process, successful applicants will have:
- Created an innovative, impactful and scalable digital health idea for funding.
- Developed their ability to present innovative ideas in a clear, engaging and persuasive way.
- Understood and implemented an innovative approach to translating research in digital health
Our partner organisations will benefit from developing strong links across different organisations, likely to lead to many further projects and to accelerate progress towards patient benefit.