Double award win for South Tyneside NHS Foundation research team

It was a double award win for South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust's research team when they notched up yet more accolades for their collaborative research with Newcastle University.
South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trusts Research and Development Manager Claire Livingstone, Research Trials Co-ordinator Amy Burns and Research Midwife/Nurse Judith Ormonde with the Bright Ideas in Health Award for Research Impact: Improving Patient Care.South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trusts Research and Development Manager Claire Livingstone, Research Trials Co-ordinator Amy Burns and Research Midwife/Nurse Judith Ormonde with the Bright Ideas in Health Award for Research Impact: Improving Patient Care.
South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trusts Research and Development Manager Claire Livingstone, Research Trials Co-ordinator Amy Burns and Research Midwife/Nurse Judith Ormonde with the Bright Ideas in Health Award for Research Impact: Improving Patient Care.

The team won two awards in one night at the Bright Ideas in Health Awards, organised by The Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria.

They won the Research Impact: Improving Patient Care category for leading collaborations to deliver practice-changing research.

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And they were also winners in The British Healthcare Trades Awards for Best Innovation Developed in Collaboration with the NHS.

The latest honours were for ground-breaking collaboration between the NHS, university and industry, leading to the development of practice-changing endoscopy research.

The team, headed by the trust’s director of research and development Professor Colin Rees, Professor of Gastroenterology, Newcastle University, led two of the world’s largest endoscopy trials, along with Newcastle University and North Wales Organisation for Randomised Trials in Health.

The collaboration facilitated research delivery at an unprecedented pace and scale.

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As a direct result, NHS England announced earlier this year that the Endocuff Vision, a single use, disposable device, developed by ARC Medical Design Limited and designed to enhance colonoscopy (an investigation to detect and prevent colorectal cancer), would be fast tracked for use in the NHS, potentially saving lives.

Earlier this year, South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust was also a winner in the Medilink Northern Powerhouse Healthcare Business Awards for the Endocuff Vision collaboration.

In 2016, the Trust’s team won the UK’s leading NHS research award in the prestigious Health Service Journal Awards, being recognised as the best in the country for their global impact on clinical research.

Ken Bremner, chief executive of South Tyneside and City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trusts, said: “Colin and his team have a proven track record for delivering high-quality, life-changing and life-saving research and I am proud and delighted that they have been given this much deserved recognition.”

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Professor Rees added: “We are honoured to have received these latest awards, which recognise the hard work of the team and demonstrate the effective partnership between South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust, Newcastle University, industry and patients in delivering practice-changing endoscopy research.

“Working together we aim to prevent and diagnose bowel cancer earlier to stop people dying from this disease.”

Newcastle University’s Professor Gareth Veal was a finalist in this year’s Bright Ideas in Health Awards for the therapeutic drug monitoring service he has developed, which allows clinicians to obtain vital information about how much chemotherapy individual young patients should receive.

Professor Steve Clifford, director of the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University, said: “The award wins recognise the importance of collaborative research between Newcastle University and the NHS.

“Bowel cancer kills 44 people in the UK every day and high quality research like this is essential to improve these statistics.”