Click here to see Professor Guang-Zhong Yang, Director of the Hamlyn Centre, speaking to the BBC on medical robotics after news that the government has published a UK strategy for stimulating growth in robotics and autonomous systems (RAS).
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Eleven teams of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust staff pitched their ideas at a Dragon’s Den style Imperial Patient Safety Challenge event for a chance to win up to £30,000 funding.
On 18 June, the NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC) challenged Imperial College Healthcare staff to submit their applications for projects that are able to improve patient safety and quality of care in our hospitals.
More than 80 applications were received, which were shortlisted to 11 ideas that encompassed healthcare apps, service improvement methodologies, point of care diagnostics and education and training. Up to ten winning projects will be provided with a maximum of £30,000 each and expert support to transform these ideas into innovative products or patient safety intervention within our Trust.
Opening the event, Professor the Lord Ara Darzi, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation and the NIHR Imperial PSTRC said: “We hope that this event will be a stimulus not just to the clinicians and nurses, but to any members of staff to come up with ideas to improve patient safety in the NHS. If we are able to find some brilliant projects, there may be an opportunity to disseminate the idea across the network.”
The finalists pitched their ideas to the ‘Dragons’, a panel of prominent patient safety experts, which included Professor the Lord Ara Darzi; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, journalist and author; Martin Bromiley, pilot and patient safety advocate; and Shona Maxwell, Chief of Staff, Office of the Medical Director, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
The pitchers represent varied professions within the Trust, including clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professions and managers, and the ideas that they presented stimulated enthusiastic debates amongst the panel and an audience with a keen interest on patient safety.
Special mentions go to Krishna Moorthy, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Upper Gastrointestinal, who pitched a new app idea for surgical site infection surveillance and improvement. With the help of his team of a junior doctor and nurse, they put up a dynamic act of how clinical scenarios would improve if this app was implemented. The last team to pitch, Lee Bolton, Senior Specialist Speech & Language Therapist, and Karima Collins, Interim Clinical Service Lead, Adult Acute Speech & Language Therapy, presented ways to improve safety of thickened liquids delivery for patients who find it difficult to swallow, and spiced things up for the panel when they provided the ‘Dragons’ with the materials to make Stage 1 syrup consistency.
Closing the event, Shona Maxwell said: “I think it was an excellent event where the standard of presentation was very high. From a Trust perspective, it is great to see the types of projects that we can incorporate into the Trust to improve patient safety.”
Professor the Lord Ara Darzi said: “We’re interested in not just the end product, but the process, the frontline staff working on the delivery of care. I would like to invite anyone out there who we haven’t been able to reach to come forward with your creative ideas to make a significant impact on patient safety. If we have any funding left from this event, we may very well be holding a similar event after summer.”
Winners will be announced in the next few days.
The PSTRC at Imperial is part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Dr Paul Strutton (Senior Lecturer in Neurophysiology) yesterday appeared on the One show, providing his expert knowledge for a report on reaction times in line with Wimbledon starting this week. Click here to visit the BBC iPlayer page to see him in action (at around 14 minutes in)
Lord Darzi spoke at the London Assembly on Wednesday the 18th of June, answering questions on health promotion, access, pollution & leadership.
To watch the webcast of this event please go to the website and click on the London Assembly Plenary (London Health Commission) event.
- Professor Jeremy Nicholson attended 62nd ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics in Baltimore – 15-19 June 2014
- Professor Elaine Holmes had a Keynote Lecture entitled: Gut Microbiome-Host Metabolic Interaction: a Metabolome-Wide Association Study, Seminars Amphithéâtre Marguerite de Navarre – Marcelin Berthelot Collège de France, Paris – 02 June 2014
- Professor Naomi Chayen has been selected as a management committee member on a European Commission – European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) – a new collaborative initiative entitled ‘From molecules to crystals’ involving over 30 groups across Europe.
- Lord Darzi participated in the UN hosted Cavendish Global Health Impact Forum UN Meeting in New York as part of British Healthcare System Panel – 5 May 2014
- Professor Lesley Regan was invited to speak on “Treatment of recurrent pregnancy losses” and “Recurrent miscarriage and abnormal uterine bleeding” at the 36th National Congress of the South African Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (SASOG), Cape Town, 18-23 May 2014 and “Modern management of recurrent miscarriage” at the XXIV European Congress of Perinatal Medicine”, Florence, Italy, 7 June 2014
- Professor Wendy Atkin gave a talk on ‘Bowel Cancer prevention by Screening, Surveillance & Early Diagnosis’ to Cancer Research UK and members of the Bobby Moore Fund at St Mary’s Hospital on 11 June 2014
- Dr Anthony Gordon, Clinical Senior Lecturer, has been appointed as “Director of Research” for the Intensive Care Foundation
- Professor Philip Bennett has been appointed as Research Director for Women’s and Children’s Health at Imperial College Healthcare Trust.
- Professor Darzi provided an overview and update on the aims and work done by the London Health Commission at the North West London Whole Systems Integrated Care Launch Event on 15th May 2014. Over the past 6 months partners from across North West London worked to co-design solutions to deliver whole systems integrated care.
- Professor Hani Gabra, as Chair of the organising committee for the British Gynaecological Cancer Society (BGCS) in conjunction with NCRI Gynaecological Cancer Clinical Studies Group, wishes to announce the 6th annual EURTOC meeting on 12th July 2014. For a full programme, registration details and further information, please visit the website
Congratulations to Professor Ian Wilson who has just been announced as the winner of the 2014 Bioanalysis Outstanding Contribution Award.
Prof Wilson was nominated by his colleagues, who highlighted his pioneering research in drug metabolism, molecular toxicology and metabonomics, and his generosity as a collaborator, teacher and mentor. One nominator commented “His wide knowledge and deep devotion to the field inspires his collaborators and gives them the tools to surpass logistic or technical limitations.”
To see more details about the award and Prof Wilson’s interview please visit the Bioanalytics Zone website.
Researchers have confirmed the role of a protein called Lemur Tyrosine Kinase 3 (LMTK3) in the spread of breast cancer to other parts of the body.
Click on the image to read more about the article Dr George Giamas and Professor Justin Stebbing from the Division of Cancer were involved in.
You are invited to attend a seminar entitled “Dantrolene, For Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease?” to be given by Dr Wei, University of Pennsylvania, at 10 am on Wednesday 25th of June at Chelsea & Westminster Campus.
Please see the Event Poster for more details.
Congratulations to Dr Anthony Gordon, Clinical Senior Lecturer, who has been appointed as “Director of Research” for the Intensive Care Foundation
APMIC is now offering a Surgery & Anaesthesia module as part of the popular Biomedical Research MRes at Imperial College starting this Autumn.
Dr Sanooj Soni , Academic Clinical Fellow, was awarded a competitive ATS International Trainee Scholarship Award to attend the ATS International Conference in San Diego, based on an abstract submitted for the meeting held between 17-22nd May 2014. On the day the abstract and presentation were well received at the meeting.
Earlybird registration for the 2014 Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics closes on 12 June so take a look at the website to register hamlyn-robotics.org
Professor Roger Kneebone, Dr Fernando Bello and their team were at the Cheltenham Science Fair on the 6-7th of June demonstrating their “Heart Surgery Live” extravaganza.
Read more on the engagement work of Professor Kneebone and his team on the Explore Surgery website.
We are delighted to invite you to London’s 8th Surgical Symposium on Wednesday 3rd of September 2014. Please click on the Surgical Symposium Poster for more details.
The programme for the day includes:
- The 67th Simpson Smith Memorial Lecture: “Improving surgical outcomes in rectal cancer surgery: past, present and future” by Professor Per Nilsson, Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden
- “The role of surgery after chemoradiation in oesophageal cancer” by Professor Christophe Mariette, University of Lille 2, France
- “The use of bioimpedance for clinical applications” by Professor Richard Bayford, Middlesex University, United Kingdom
- Plenary and Poster Sessions with prizes, a debate, and the announcement of the Simpson Smith Travel Award winner 2014
Call for abstracts:
We welcome submission of abstracts for the plenary, poster and audit poster sessions at this stage, full details of how to submit can be found on our website and the deadline is the 25th of July 2014.
Extension of deadline for applications for the Simpson Smith Travel Award:
Applicants are invited to apply for the Alex Simpson Smith Travelling Fellowships and the deadline has been extended to 25th of July 2014. These awards are offered to senior surgical trainees (ST3 or above), or to newly appointed consultants (within 5 years of appointment) in any branch of surgery. The Fellowships are intended to allow candidates to visit centres of excellence abroad, in order to obtain further experience or training within their speciality, currently not available in the UK.
For further details of how to register for this event, book a place at the evening meal or apply for any of the sessions, please see our flyer which is attached, and visit our website www.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/surgicalsymposium.
Kind regards
Surgical Symposium Organising Committee
NIHR Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC) will be holding an event for the Patient Safety Challenge finalists on 18th June between 9:30am – 12pm. The successful applicants will be asked to pitch in front of a panel of judges and an audience of researchers.
Judging panel:
– Professor the Lord Ara Darzi, Professor of Surgery and NIHR Imperial PSTRC Director,
– Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, journalist and author
– Martin Bromiley, pilot and patient safety advocate
– Shona Maxwell, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Medical Directorate
The event will be held in Roger Banister LT, level 1, Medical School Building (St Mary’s Campus).
If you would like to attend please RSVP to: Renata Samulnik
PRESS RELEASE
NIHR Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (PSTRC) is a partnership between Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. We bring together leading clinicians and researchers from a range of scientific fields that all seek to improve quality and safety. The Centre is one of only two of its kind in the UK and has 6 core research themes: use of information; design and technology; patients, carers and families; safe systems; teams, skills and safety, economics, evaluation and policy.
The Imperial Patient Safety Challenge is one way the Centre is supporting patients and staff in our hospitals who may have ideas of how to enhance safety and quality. With £300,000 of financial support available as well as strategic advice from staff in the Centre, we are providing the ingredients to turn great ideas into solutions that actually benefit our patients.
We received over 80 applications to the challenge. We have shortlisted 11 fantastic ideas that encompass apps, service improvement methodologies, point of care diagnostics and education and training. Teams will present their ideas to a panel including Professor Ara Darzi, the journalist and author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and pilot and patient safety advocate Martin Bromiley. Winners will be announced shortly after and all successful teams will be encouraged to work together in a real movement to improve patient safety and quality of care in our hospitals.
Imperial Patient Safety Translational Research Centre is part of NIHR.
Postgraduate Education Administrator Susan Clark recently teamed up with Amir Rana, Junior Software Engineer, for the pilot phase of an Imperial Mobile Initiative. A training session was held in May to teach Postgraduate Administrators how to build an App for their specific Masters’ programmes, using the College licensed software Ombiel. The training provided an opportunity to learn and share the challenges and resolutions of applying different course structures to the App.
The story behind the initiative goes back to March 2013 when Susan wrote to IT, asking for an App that with the facility to push out essential course information to students and incorporate electronic student evaluations. Saul Batzofin, Infrastructure Programme Manager, responded by providing training using Qualtrics, a recently acquired survey software. Evaluations had already been customised for Surgery and Cancer courses by Dr Kirsten Dalrymple, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Course lead (MEd Surgical Education) and will shortly be accessible via the MEd App. This summer will see Susan working on improvements to the existing surveys and Apps, getting them ready for the 2014 /15 cohort. New students will have a 10 minute orientation in the use of the App in Module 1 of their respective Masters Programme, October 2014.
As for the future, Surgery and Cancer have a new MSc Masters programme pending, a move to a modularised structure that fits well with the surgical trainees career pathway. This year’s collaboration and initiative has paved the way for the use of the App for this new Programme, with the potential to go beyond administrative technology into Mobile learning.
Next week will be the Imperial Annual Athena SWAN lecture, which this year is given by Professor Deborah Smith OBE, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, University of York
Surgery and Cancer recently submitted their Bronze application at the end of April and are awaiting the result of this some time in the Autumn. Expect to hear more on this in the coming months as we begin to implement our action plan.
News of Imperial’s £40 million donation from Michael Uren OBE has been picked up by the Times and Evening Standard, see below for stories:
- Ex-student donates £40m for research thetim.es/1jTwqHd
- £40m gift “keeps Imperial at the forefront of medical innovation, and London ahead of the competition” @standardnews bit.ly/1weuOx8