TITCH – a national network of experts dedicated to transforming child health through technology and innovation.

Created to drive technology innovation for the health needs of children and young people.

Project Partners

  • NIHR Devices for Dignity HRC
  • NIHR HRC in Paediatrics and Child Health
  • Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

Health and Care Requirement

The TITCH network is a national network of experts dedicated to transforming child health through technology and innovation. TITCH was created out of the need to innovate for children and young people.

The Project Concept

The TITCH network was established in 2014 to address common problems in child health technology:

  • A lack of health technology designed specifically for children and young people.
  • Health technology is often designed for adults and repurposed for children and young people.
  • Many technologies used in paediatric healthcare do not account for the anatomical and physiological changes that occur throughout childhood and adolescence.
  • The fragmented approach to developing and evaluating child health technology across the UK

The TITCH network is comprised of experts across the UK seeking to support the development, evaluation, and adoption of child health technology. Members of the TITCH network have a diverse range of backgrounds, including health care, education, academia, industry, patient representation, NHS research and development, and NIHR infrastructure.

Objectives include:

  • Working with health professionals, children, young people, families, and other stakeholders across the country to identify and validate unmet needs in child health
  • Facilitating collaborations between the right stakeholders to develop and evaluate innovations for child health
  • Including children, young people and families at every step of the process to ensure innovations in child health are fit for purpose and wanted by the end users. Our ethos is to ensure that health technology for children and young people is developed collaboratively with children and young people.
  • Identifying ambassadors and clinical champions

Further information can be found on the dedicated website, here.

D4D are providing:

  • D4D co-manages the TITCH network
  • Establishment of the network
  • Working closely with children, young people, and their families and carers
  • Unmet need identification and validation
  • Relationship building
  • Supporting collaborative priority setting
  • Guiding technology development and evaluation
  • Supporting industry partners in establishing meaningful and effective projects with the NHS, charities, and academia
  • Identifying network ambassadors and clinical champions