Birmingham’s Healthcare Landscape
Whether we like it or not, health systems across the world are facing significant and enduring financial pressures; it is a fact that people’s need for services will continue to grow faster than funding.
And the NHS is certainly no stranger to this.
The NHS is currently calling for innovative and creative solutions in light of these serious challenges.
The innovation of healthcare requires co-creation with a diverse range of industries and stakeholders, ranging from tech to creative to health & social care and most importantly the patient, the public, everyone.
But how do we bring together such a diverse range of people?
Before TEDxBrum 2012, all I knew was medical engineering. TEDxBrum broadened my horizon. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of collaborations with people from varying backgrounds, interests and experiences. It changed the way I worked and that was only from a one day event. As Immy Kaur wrote, What if TEDxBrum was everyday? This is where Impact Hub Birmingham was born. It will play a crucial part by being a space for like minded individuals to come together to work, share, learn and inspire. It will also help people, without a healthcare background, to understand the problems that are upon us and collaborate to make change.
Whether it is a designer looking to make a ward beautiful yet intuitive to reduce infection control; a clinician seeking to collaborate with an app developer to reduce waiting times; a mother working with engineers to make functional disability equipment; or a community promoting healthy living, everyone has a part to play in producing better health outcomes and efficient services.
These solutions need to be locally driven, but also able to be applied on a global scale (Making the Local Global!). Models developed in the UK can then be translated at a multi-national stage. For instance, the tech used to care for somebody at home rather than in hospital, reduces costs here, but can be used to monitor healthcare in rural India, where the nearest hospital is hundreds of miles away.
Even though we don’t hear much of health start-ups emerging from Birmingham, Birmingham is strategically positioned to lead the way in innovating healthcare service delivery and bring these various industries together.
Why?
Because Birmingham has a diverse population that, unlike London, is static. This lends its self to the research needed to provide evidence for the adoption of new and innovative ways of working.
Because Birmingham and the West Midlands have 6 institutions, training the next generation healthcare workforce. The development of a “public” medical school is looking to subsidise the cost of medical degree for West Midlands students, aiming at training students from hard-to-reach communities to become doctors to who are likely to serve their own communities.
Because Birmingham has some of the largest trusts in the country (including the Centre for Defence Medicine) and they are looking to engage with the SME community to innovate the way they work, along with the soon to be Institute of Translational Medicine & BioHub, each will be looking to accelerate the adoption of new therapies by working small businesses & startups.
Because Birmingham has a pool of talent eager to take on the challenge, from its industrial heritage to its thriving tech and creative scene.
We rarely hear of health start-ups or innovative changes in service delivery emerging from Birmingham. But it has all of the right ingredients to produce some truly ground-breaking changes.
Birmingham has the clinical infrastructure and a thriving start-up community, but these need to come together. Some networks around Birmingham, such as Health 2.0 Birmingham, and Science Capital are making inroads into this by bringing together the different communities and industries to inspire and innovate through regular events. Impact Hub Birmingham can help facilitate these interactions further. Giving NHS trusts, clinicians, small business and freelancers a platform to collaborate, learn and create.
Impact Hub Birmingham will play a key role in bringing healthcare narrative to people who never thought of getting involved within the healthcare sector, or find it difficult to engage with the health sector. The Impact Hub network can give a global stage to these innovations which can be modified to suit the local need.
Impact Hub Birmingham will be opening its doors early in 2015 but we need your support, please visit our crowd funder page to pledge or even come and see the lovely new space by signing up to one of our Open House sessions!
