4 minute read
TriTech Institute supports the innovation and development of new technologies in healthcare
TriTech Institute is a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers and clinicians, facilitating and driving the development of innovative new medical technologies. During the past year, TriTech has worked on a number of clinical evaluation studies, consultancies and initiatives with Med Tech companies across the UK. The team uses an outcome-based healthcare approach to develop innovative healthcare technology solutions with partners and affiliates through the support of research, innovation and evaluation. TriTech has continued to develop a number of important collaborations in the academic and commercial sectors and has recently developed additional memorandums of understanding with the Welsh Wound Innovation Centre and Welsh Institute for Digital Information. Several projects are also funded through the Bevan Commission, Health and Care Research Wales (HCRW) and Accelerate.
For work carried out with Bond Digital Health on the development of an application to improve the management of COPD, TriTech Institute was recently awarded the Health and Social Care Research Partnership with Industry Award at the MediWales Innovation Awards 2021. Head of TriTech, Professor Chris Hopkins, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won the Health and Social Care Research Partnership Award with Industry. Our congratulations to all of the award winners and thank you to MediWales, Health and Care Research Wales, Life Science Hub Wales, and all of the sponsors.”
The official TriTech Launch Event took place on 16th November 2021 and was well received, with a keynote speech by Dr Andrew Goodall, Permanent Secretary within Welsh Government. The event highlighted the various collaborative partners and projects being undertaken by TriTech. TriTech offers a unique support service to clinical, academic and commercial health technology developers to support health technology adoption within the NHS.
Project set-up and implementation at TriTech
One of TriTech’s specialities is connecting industry and academic partners to clinical staff within the health boards in Wales. This helps to facilitate ‘realworld’ testing of innovative healthcare solutions and devices.
During project setup it is important to capture the client’s overall goals and objectives for any work that is to be carried out. The team handles this using a scoping process where they focus on understanding what is needed and how best to cater for their client’s needs. This could mean testing a new solution in its intended clinical environment to inform updates or changes so that it is more fit for purpose, or exploring a specific area of healthcare to investigate what kinds of solutions would have the most positive impact. A very important part of these early stages of a project is the buy-in or interest from practicing clinicians. A technology could be very well thought out and designed from an engineering perspective, but if the relevant clinicians don’t see a place for it in their practice, then finding out why is important. By structuring these ‘real world’ evaluations in this way. industry partners get the data they need to get their innovations into routine clinical care and clinicians have an opportunity to help shape upcoming innovations to better fit their needs.
Evaluation Case Study – Multimodal Prostate Cancer A.I.
Every year in Wales, more than 2,500 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer and around 600 men die from the disease. JivaRDX is a diagnostic aid for prostate cancer that promptly highlights the existence of tumours on MRI scans. The tool enables radiologists to make more informed decisions faster. This reduces misdiagnosis, and therefore unnecessary treatment costs and complications, whilst creating better patient outcomes. Such an AI tool supports the post-COVID requirement for rapid outpatient turnaround. In this project led by Prof Chris Hopkins and Mr Sohail Moosa, working with JIVA.AI as the commercial partner and with funding from Moondance Cancer, TriTech Institute will demonstrate the first innovative deployments of JivaRDX within NHS Wales.
Another key aspect of these evaluations is the validity and integrity of results that are captured. TriTech work closely with their partners during projects, but also ensure that the results stay as true to real case results as possible. Capturing negative as well as positive aspects of any technology or innovation is important to help ensure its success in the long term.
The inaugural TriTech Challenge was recently conducted, with the aim of bringing health and social care professionals and academics together with digital and technology industry partners to solve challenges across the health care system in Wales. The challenge identified four different healthcare technology projects, each of which were awarded £20,000, with the intention of solving key clinical challenges. Through the TriTech Challenge, TriTech aims to support and accelerate the development and deployment of these new innovations with the aim of improving patient outcomes and experiences.
Key results from the latest evaluation report show that the most reported benefits by patients were ‘lowered infection rate’ (94.2%) and ‘saved travel and parking’ (92%). Clinicians agreed with these benefits, but also noted other benefits such as ‘reduced waiting times’ (68.6%) and ‘more efficient use of their clinical time/space’ (74.8%).
