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Healthcare Science Awards celebrated with HRH Princess Royal

As the NHS marks its 70th Birthday Year, NHS England is hosting an annual awards event celebrating the incredible contribution healthcare scientists make to patient care.

Royal Highness, Princess Anne will be guest of honour at this year’s Healthcare Science Awards on March 5 – celebrating the best ideas from scientists working across the National Health Service.

Some of the 40 creative ideas nominees have put forward include:

3D Tune In, a project which uses a design process to bring together hearing communities, hearing aid users, audiologists, human factors experts and game developers.  The application allow those with and without hearing loss to explore and customise different hearing aid settings for different environments.

Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) used  for blood glucose monitoring by over 1500 patient facing health care professionals who do not have clinical laboratory backgrounds. Using bite sized refresher eLearning segments based on patient stories, it highlights the link between practice shortcomings and patient safety, leading to improvements in practice and hospital based settings

A Virtual Reality app to prepare paediatric patients, aged between six and 12 year old,  for their upcoming MRI scans. The app is currently in use at three UK hospitals and under development at a fourth. A range of videos are contained within an animated, interactive virtual reality interface allowing the young people to choose their own MRI journey

Professor Sue Hill OBE, Chief Scientific Officer for England, said: “As we enter our 70th year, NHS scientists remain at the cutting edge of patient care.  A crucial element of the NHS since its inception is that it is a service that has been driven by scientific excellence and advance. High quality science making an impact on patient care has allowed the NHS to tackle the challenges of the past and present and – through initiatives such as Proton Beam radiotherapy and the introduction of the latest genomic technologies in the National Genomic Medicine Service – science and technology is rising to the challenges of the future.

“We are delighted to have the Princess Royal as our guest of honour, and know this event is an excellent showcase for the amazing work that is being achieved in our hospitals and health services on a day-to-day basis which is not always seen or recognised.”

The Awards, established by the Chief Scientific Officer for England, Professor Sue Hill OBE, will be held on the evening of 5 March and are part of an annual two day conference – Partners in the Future – running until 6 March at the Royal Society, London.

This year is the 12th year of the Healthcare Science Awards.

Up to 10 award categories including Lifetime Achievement, Excellence in Research and Innovation in Healthcare Delivery will be honoured along with recognising the lifetime contributions of a small number of senior scientists.