Health Innovation Manchester at Future Cities Forum
Above - Ben Bridgewater, Health Innovation Manchester
We are delighted that the Chief Executive of Health Innovation Manchester, Ben Bridgewater, will be speaking at our levelling up forum next week in the city.
Health Innovation Manchester, is an academic health science system that brings together health, academia and industry. The mission is to accelerate innovation into practice at pace and scale, so to transform the lives of Greater Manchester’s 2.8 million citizens.
Ben is a leading expert on health informatics, national clinical audit, clinical governance, healthcare transparency, patient experience measurement and digital transformation in healthcare, publishing numerous high profile academic outputs and delivering innovative IT tools for disseminating clinical outcomes to professionals and the public.
Prior to joining Health Innovation Manchester, Ben worked for global technology company DXC Technology as the Director of the Healthcare and Lifesciences Global Build Advisory Team. Until January 2016, he was a cardiac surgeon at the University Hospital of South Manchester for nearly 18 years.
Ben also provided clinical leadership for the UK national cardiac audit programme, as well as leading analyses that provides UK hospital and cardiac surgery mortality rates to the public. The programme is world-leading and associated with a 50% reduction in risk-adjusted mortality over 10 years.
Health Innovation Manchester was formed in October 2017 by bringing together the former Greater Manchester academic health science network (GM AHSN) and Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) under one single umbrella, which also represents Greater Manchester’s wider research and innovation system.
Health Innovation Manchester works with innovators to discover, develop and deploy new solutions, harnessing the transformative power of health and care, industry and academia working together to address major challenges and tackle inequalities. It works at the forefront of healthcare innovation, working with partners to discover, develop and deploy new healthcare solutions so it is are able to harness the power of the NHS, wider health and care system, industry and academia within the region to address major challenges and tackle inequalities. Because of this the organisation is fast becoming an international leader in health innovation and digital healthcare, transforming the health and wellbeing of citizens across Greater Manchester.
Partnership is the core of its work and through strong relationships and collaborative working it brings together expertise from across the system to turn great ideas into healthcare solutions. From clinical trials to digital tools, academic research to healthcare analytics, our work is wide-ranging, exciting and makes a difference to people’s lives.
Diabetes and Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester has joined cities such as Copenhagen, Rome and Shanghai as part of the Cities Changing Diabetes partnership to help reduce the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the city region.
In 2019 Manchester was named the twenty-first global city to join Cities Changing Diabetes, in partnership with Health Innovation Manchester.
Launched in 2014 by Novo Nordisk, University College London and the Steno Diabetes Center, Cities Changing Diabetes aims to support innovative new approaches to the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes in cities. The programme supports communities to understand their unique set of diabetes challenges, identify areas and populations at greatest risk, and design targeted interventions that can put change in motion.
Manchester is the second UK city, after Leicester, to be part of the global Cities Changing Diabetes programmes, and it follows diabetes prevalence in the city region doubling in the past 20 years. Statistics from Public Health England show that in 2019/20 prevalence of diabetes in Greater Manchester was 7.4%, slightly higher the average for England 7.1%. Reference
Cities Changing Diabetes Manchester is a joint working project that is funded by and developed in collaboration between Health Innovation Manchester and Novo Nordisk.
Dementia, UK cities and Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is aiming to be “the best place to live with dementia in the world” and Health Innovation Manchester is committed to supporting work towards this vision.
It is estimated that there are currently over 30,000 people living with dementia in Greater Manchester with the city region spending £270million a year treating and caring for people with dementia.
With an ageing population and rising numbers of people being diagnosed with dementia, it is one of the greatest health challenges facing the country and Greater Manchester.
Health Innovation Manchester is working with academia, the healthcare system, commissioners and providers within Greater Manchester to consider the future possibilities of prevention, via the development of an Early Dementia Diagnostic framework for Greater Manchester working with the Dementia Industry Group, which is a life sciences industry collaborative group supporting the UK to lead in the field of dementia treatment and research