A Sheffield scientist who joined the NHS as an 18-year-old junior technologist has been named as the national Healthcare Scientist of the Year.

Professor Wendy Tindale, now the Scientific Director of Medical Imaging & Medical Physics at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has contributed to the development of many clinical science innovations that have improved frontline care during her career. Professor Tindale, who has an OBE for Services to Healthcare, is also the Clinical Director of the National Institute of Health Research Devices for Dignity Healthcare Technology Co-operative, which focusses on harnessing technology to improve patient dignity.

She received the accolade at the 2016 Chief Scientific Officer’s Awards in London. It recognises her as an exceptional individual, who has used her skills and scientific ability for maximum patient and service benefit, engaged and collaborated with wider professional groups and demonstrated the broad contribution that scientists make to the NHS.

She said: “I am delighted and humbled to receive this award, which is really for the great teams of healthcare scientists and other professionals that I have had the fortune to work with over many years.

“Operating at the forefront of science and innovation, their skills and expertise make such an important contribution to high quality patient care.”

Through her work with Devices for Dignity, she has been at the forefront of developing technology to help people with long term illnesses or disabilities manage their conditions with dignity and independence. Most recently, Devices for Dignity has collaborated with other teams to successfully develop a novel, supportive neck collar for people with Motor Neurone Disease and a digital bladder diary to help people with urinary incontinence manage their condition.

During her career she has also worked on projects including the design of artificial heart valves, where she gained her Doctorate degree, and the development of new scanning techniques for medical imaging. She led a successful bid, announced in January, for the Sheffield City Region to be recognised as a national ‘Test Bed’ for trialling new technologies to help patients to self-care. She has extensive experience in frontline patient care as well as healthcare innovation, and has successfully translated research findings into patient benefits. She has contributed to numerous national and international committees and published widely in scientific literature.

GSPK Design Ltd have taken a huge step forward with developing a new product to aide those with severe disabilities.

A £500,000 phase two funding development contract was awarded to GSPK Design after impressive results from the initial phase one process. The work was commissioned and funded by the SBRI Healthcare programme. SBRI Healthcare is an NHS England initiative, championed by the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). GSPK Design in partnership with The Assistive Technology Team at Barnsley Hospital, The Centre for Assistive Technology & Connected Healthcare at the University of Sheffield and the NIHR Devices for Dignity Healthcare Technology Co-operative (D4D), will build on work from phase one and further develop a unique wireless smart switch to help people who have acute brain injury or severe disabilities using tiny electrical signals produced by muscles (electromyography, EMG) to engage with their environment.

“This is a fantastic achievement for GSPK Design, all our effort and collaboration with the various bodies within the NHS over the last few years is now starting to come together,” said Managing Director of GSPK Design, Paul Marsh. “As a company we are in a unique position to be able to offer full product design, manufacture and regulatory support under one roof right here in North Yorkshire. This funding will not only allow us to develop the product to take it through clinical trials and to market, but it will also allow us to implement medical standards into our processes that will not only benefit us, but also our other customers, so I’m not sure which is more exciting, being able to develop our own products within the Medtech field or being able to help other companies develop theirs.”

Speaking on behalf of D4D, Commercial Director of Devices for Dignity Ltd, Oliver Wells (picture, right) said “Supported by the NHS SBRI scheme, the D4D team including colleagues from Barnsley Hospital and led by GSPK Design have pooled our complementary skills –clinical insight and understanding patient needs; electronic design and manufacturing; regulatory know-how and international marketing to solve this problem. Together, this team produced a successful demonstrator system in 6 months, and we are now well on the way to get a new product to a point where it can be used by people within the next 18 months, giving them an opportunity to regain control over their lives.”

The Sheffield City region is to be announced as one of seven national ‘Test Bed’ innovation centres to take part in a major drive to modernise how the NHS delivers care.

‘Test Beds’ are new collaborations between the NHS and innovators which aim to harness technology to address some of the most complex issues facing patients and the health service. Successful innovations will then be available for other parts of the country to adopt and adapt to the particular needs of their local populations.

The ‘Perfect Patient Pathway’, as the Sheffield City region Test Bed will be known, aims to create the ‘perfect patient pathway’ to bring substantial benefits for patients suffering from long term health conditions, such as diabetes, mental health problems, respiratory disease, hypertension and other chronic conditions.

The full press release is available here:

http://www.sth.nhs.uk/news/news?action=view&newsID=788

On 2 June 2015 Devices for Dignity held ‘My Dignity Means: A Patient-led Event‘. The day was the culmination of months of working closely with patients to build an event that gave people with long-term conditions (and their carers) the opportunity to tell the NHS and industry about their lived experiences, and their priorities for future product development. The event’s programme was based upon the 655 responses to the Independence and Dignity Survey that we conducted from February to May 2015. Since the event we’ve been busy following up on the priorities that attendees identified for us.

On 2 December we released a report on our Independence and Dignity Survey findings, the priorities identified at the event, and what we’ve been doing in the 6 months since our Patient-led Event. The report has been shared directly with attendees and survey responders, and is also available to download, here, from 2 December 2015. You can also download the survey for reference here.