New health innovation programme launches to improve patient care

The CW Innovation programme, led by Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and its charity CW+, launches today to improve patient care and address some of the real-time challenges that healthcare organisations face today.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and CW+ have been developing a pipeline of ‘test and scale’ innovation projects to be rolled out across the Trust and disseminated throughout the NHS stakeholder network. Examples include the UK’s largest study of wearable monitoring technology, the UK’s first cancer clinic of its kind fast tracking patients with clinical suspicions of cancer, and the Mum & Baby app that’s now being rolled out across the North West London catchment and to other national NHS maternity centres.

The launch today marks a new phase in the Trust’s commitment to design, attract, embed and evaluate new initiatives and technologies to transform operational efficiency and, critically, patient care and patient experience.

“CW Innovation is designed to connect the frontline clinical and operational staff and partner organisations, both in and outside of the NHS. We strongly believe it will lead to improvements in the care we provide to our patients and the way we run our hospitals,” explains Lesley Watts, Chief Executive of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. “With over 70 projects in our pipeline, an increasing number of external partners and a growing innovation team, we are excited to officially launch CW Innovation today.”

By delivering a portfolio of evaluated, real-world projects, CW Innovation will be the only programme of its kind in a UK acute hospital setting and a unique resource bridging the public and commercial healthcare sectors.  

“We are a Global Digital Exemplar, a founding partner of DigitalHealth.London Accelerator and run nationally recognised, award winning services. We are well placed to respond to the increasing demand to discover, test and adopt innovative, scalable solutions that support the delivery of better patient-centred, more responsive and cost-effective care,” says Chris Chaney, Chief Executive of CW+. “CW Innovation is a unique programme that we believe can make a real difference to patient care in our Trust and across the NHS.”

At the launch event today at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Dr Nick Scott-Ram, Chief of Strategic Development at Sensyne Health, one of the Trust’s innovation partners, commented: “We are delighted to be working with the Trust to analyse anonymised patient data using Sensyne Health’s clinical artificial intelligence technology, and collaborate in digital health and biomedical research to gain new insights to improve the care of patients at the Trust. We have seen first-hand how the teams here have developed a proactive and open environment enabling the introduction and evaluation of the latest clinical and digital innovations including those from Sensyne Health.”

Lord O’Shaughnessy, who served as parliamentary under secretary of state in the Department of Health and Social Care between 2016 and 2018, and was also speaking at the launch of CW Innovation today, believes the Trust is emerging as a leader in healthcare innovation; “Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has a proven track record as an early-adopter and designer of next-generation services and care tools. By evaluating the real-world experience and by putting the patients first, they have been able to roll out initiatives—such as the award-winning Mum & Baby app and the Patchwork software system to enhance the management of temporary staffing across NHS services so more patients and organisations can benefit.”

The Trust, which celebrated its 300-year anniversary earlier this year, has a rich history in innovation and was the first voluntary hospital in the world, founded in 1719. Dr Zoë Penn, Chief Medical Officer, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust says, “We are proud to have been at the forefront of innovation with a long list of hospital ‘firsts’ in emergency care, brain tumour extraction, breast cancer chemotherapy, HIV diagnosis and anaesthetics, to name but a few. We look forward to building on this culture of innovation to continue to deliver first class patient care through sector-leading innovation.”