ESCAPE-pain selected to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator

Professor Mike Hurley’s rehabilitation programme, ESCAPE-pain, one of 11 innovations selected to join the nationally-celebrated NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA).

Now entering its third year, the NIA is an NHS England initiative delivered in partnership with England’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). Since it launched in July 2015, the NIA has supported the uptake and spread of 25 high-impact, evidence-based innovations across 799 NHS organisations.

Each of the new innovations joining the NIA in 2017 offer solutions to key challenges in Primary Care, Urgent and Emergency Care and Mental Health. ESCAPE-pain is a rehabilitation programme for people with chronic joint pain. It is proven to reduce pain for patients and help them to understand their condition, at lower cost to healthcare organisations.

ESCAPE-pain’s recruitment onto the NIA follows an international call and robust selection process, including review by a collegiate of over 100 assessors and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

Ian Dodge, National Director for Strategy and Innovation at NHS England, said: “Since it started the NHS Innovation Accelerator has continued to deliver for patients and the taxpayer. It’s just one of the ways that the NHS is getting its act together to provide practical help for innovators with the best ideas. From a small investment, we are already seeing very big benefits – safer care for patients, better value for taxpayers, new jobs created and export wins.”

ESCAPE-pain was recently awarded £392,000 of funding from Sport England. With 36% of over 55’s inactive the funding will support the expansion of the programme and its combination of pain coping strategies and tailored exercise techniques for each individual that takes part. Read more about how this funding will further help spread the adoption of ESCAPE-pain to community settings here.

The 11 innovations selected to join the NIA in 2017 are:

• CATCH – Common Approach To Children’s Health: Addressing the inappropriate use of NHS services when self-care would be more appropriate, the CATCH app gives parents appropriate and understandable information when they need and want it, via smartphone or tablet.

• Dip.io: App which turns a smartphone into a clinical device, providing patients with clinically accurate urine analysis from home in a matter of minutes.

• ESCAPE-pain: ‘Enabling Self-management and Coping of Arthritic Pain through Exercise’ or ESCAPE-pain, is a six-week group programme delivered to people aged 45+ with Osteoarthritis (OA).

• FREED: The FREED ‘first episode rapid early intervention service for eating disorders’ model of care provides a rapid early response intervention for young people aged 16 to 25 years with short (three years or less) first episode illness duration.

• Home monitoring of hypertension in pregnancy (HaMpton): New care pathway involving the use of an app for monitoring high blood pressure at home, empowering expectant mothers to be involved in their own care.

• Lantum: A cloud-based tool built to help NHS Providers fill empty shifts in clinical rotas.

• My Diabetes My Way: Low-cost, scalable, comprehensive online self-management platform for people with diabetes.

• ORCHA: ORCHA works with CCGs and Providers to develop health app portals, allowing professionals easy and clear access to a verified resource. This enables them to enhance services and outcomes by finding and recommending the best apps to patients.

• Oviva Diabetes Support: A fully remote, technology-enabled programme of type 2 diabetes structured education, combining 1-to-1 support from a registered dietitian with evidence-based online educational materials and use of the Oviva app to support behaviour change.

• RespiraSense: The world’s first continuous respiratory rate monitor, enabling medical teams the ability to detect signs of patient deterioration 12 hours earlier than the standard of care.

• WaitLess: Free, patient-facing app which shows patients the fastest place to access urgent care services for minor conditions.

For more information about the NIA, visit www.nhsaccelerator.com