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| A note from our chair

Submissions close for the Innovate Awards 2023 on Friday (19 May). The awards celebrate innovation in health and care and provide a great opportunity to showcase you and your team's work.

We've brought the awards back for their second year with our partner NHS Confederation. There are 11 award categories to enter with a new category to celebrate the best use of data in health innovation as well as the grand prix – winner of winners – award. 

This month's Meet the Innovator interview is with last year’s winner of the Outstanding Collaboration with Industry category, ELAROS, who launched a digital platform to support specialist long COVID services through a patient-facing app and clinical web portal. 

Finally, May marks World Asthma Month. Read on to find out more about our work to support and improve outcomes for people with severe asthma.

Professor Gary Ford, Chair of the AHSN Network and Chief Executive of Oxford AHSN

| Contents

>  1: Asthma care

>  2: Latest news
>  3: Meet the innovator: ELAROS 
>  4: Partner updates

| Thousands benefit from improved access to innovative diagnostics and life-changing treatments in asthma care

Thousands of people across England are benefitting from improved access to diagnostics and treatments for asthma. To mark this World Asthma Month the AHSN Network is celebrating the achievements of two national programmes, which have worked in partnership to transform asthma pathways.

From April 2021 to March 2023, AHSNs in England supported the adoption and spread of two innovations under the Accelerated Access Collaborative’s (AAC) Rapid Uptake Products Programme: Fractional exhaled Nitric Oxide (FeNO) testing and Asthma Biologics.

Both innovations were selected after being identified as products that aligned with the NHS Long Term Plan’s key clinical priorities, but had, at the time, a lower-than-expected uptake.
Read more

| Latest news

New app launches to support patients with severe asthma on biologic therapies

A new app supported by the AHSN Network is helping clinicians to give better care to patients with severe asthma on biologic therapy.

The myAsthma Biologic app supports patients prescribed asthma biologics to manage their asthma at home and allows their clinical teams to monitor them remotely.

Uncontrolled and severe asthma affects up to 200,000 people in the UK and it has a huge impact on their lives. Many are frequently admitted to hospital as an emergency and may experience serious side-effects from extended periods on steroid-based medication. Find out more.

Accelerating FemTech

Accelerating FemTech is a new initiative to support innovators to boost the development of technology solutions to address current challenges in women’s health and is delivered through AHSN partnerships across the country. The initiative is looking to inspire, by engaging innovators around the challenges in women’s health, and to accelerate, by delivering a targeted 10-week accelerator programme for small/medium-sized companies from across the UK. 

Find out more and sign up to a range of fascinating events on women’s health and innovation. 

What does safety look like at system level?

Dr Cheryl Crocker, AHSN Network Patient Safety Director, took part in a round table event hosted by Aqua to consider the question: What does safety look like at a system level?

The event was chaired by Professor Ted Baker, former Chief Inspector at the CQC and Chair of the Health Service Safety Investigations Body and discussion was structured around key questions with the main themes captured in a report. Read the report.

Carbon accounting and measuring impact webinar

Catch-up with our latest Carbon accounting and measuring impact webinar, which was held on 28 April 2023 as part of our supporting NHS Net Zero and sustainability events series.

Attended by over 200 delegates, the webinar explored how to effectively quantify carbon emissions, deploy projects and measure impact.

| Meet the Innovator: ELAROS

In this month’s Meet the Innovator interview we speak with Román Rocha Lawrence, Director of Research and Development at ELAROS and part-time Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, which collaboratively launched a digital platform to support specialist long COVID services through a patient-facing app and clinical web portal.

The innovation won the Outstanding Collaboration with Industry category at last year’s Innovate Awards, which celebrate innovation in health and care.

Román tells us why long COVID services are so valuable and why perseverance and enjoying the process is key to being an innovator. 
Meet Román

| Partner updates
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