Clinicians and academics at IGHI have challenged their colleagues to design an app to improve healthcare in a unique Dragon's Den-style contest.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Imperial College London and DigitalStitch, a spin-out company from Imperial College London, launched the competition in September this year asking  for a 250-word design brief for an app that would transform how health services are delivered and how patients are communicated with.

Ara Darzi, Director of Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI), who had the idea behind the competition, said: “Working in a healthcare environment, many members of staff have fantastic ideas on how we can use smart phones and applications to improve patient care and efficiency.

“I have often been approached by staff wanting to share their ideas and this competition is the first of many we hope to run to give staff a formal vehicle to bring their innovations forward.”

Over 60 submissions to the competition were received, which were whittled down to 12 final entries.  The hot contenders then had to ‘sell’ their ideas to a panel of experts and show why their innovation  should win a virtual pot of development time equivalent to £15,000.

The prestigious panel or ‘dragons’ included: Professor the Lord Darzi, director of Imperial College London’s Institute of Global Health Innovation; Kevin Jarrold, chief information officer at the Trust; and Tim Kelsey, director for patients and information at NHS England..

Peter Hames, CEO of Sleepio – a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy app which helps people with anxiety and insomnia to sleep – was also on the panel providing industry experience. Tim Bunting, a partner in the venture capitalist firm, , Balderton Capital, examined the ideas from a funding perspective.

To be considered for the competition, the app idea suggested needed to be financially viable, unique and innovative. Applications received covered areas like: patient information, diagnostic aids, surgical devices and data capture.

The judges were so impressed by the standard of entries they decided on two, joint winners. One app, designed by surgeon, Mr Muzzafer Chaudery, aims to strengthen patients’ lungs pre-and post-surgery. The idea came to Muzz while working in the States where he noticed that many patients having major abdominal and cardiothoracic surgery had a device next to their bed for improving lung performance. He said: “I wanted to create a light-weight, portable equivalent that patients could use in the weeks running up to surgery to strengthen their lungs and reduce the incidents of complications like chest infections.”

Muzz’s innovation will be piloted in a feasibility study with patients at Imperial College Healthcare.

The second winning app came from a trio of inventors: Tim Knowles, A&E SHO, Greg Scott, academic neurology registrar, and Ed Presswoord, academic clinical fellow. The idea for their app was one to help health professionals share clinical images. Currently when one clinician seeks the opinion of another about a condition or injury, they have to describe it over the phone or request a medical photographer – a service which takes time and isn’t available out of hours. This app will allow clinicians to securely share images.

Tim said: “The app will allow us to take high quality images that are beneficial to our clinical colleagues in planning a patient’s treatment. For example, if a patient came into A&E with a motorcycle injury like a fractured ankle, which needed immediate orthopaedic surgery, we could photograph the injury before the surgery and send the images to the plastic surgery team for review so they could begin planning how they would treat the patient’s skin loss and soft tissue damage.”

The creators of the winning applications, will receive the equivalent of £15,000 in support and expertise to design, develop and market their innovation. The Imperial College London spin off company, DigitalStitch, which specialises in developing mobile technologies for healthcare, will help the winner to bring their idea to market. 

The app competition is the first in a line of projects from the HELIX Centre for Design in Healthcare – a collaboration between the Royal College of Art (RCA), Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare. HELIX will bring together designers and NHS staff to develop technological solutions to everyday problems on the ward and beyond.