Red Rose Research & Innovation Conference
On the 30th September, co-researchers Sumaiyah and Vlad attended the Red Rose Research and Innovation Conference at Lancaster University’s Health Innovation Campus. The event focused on five key themes within clinical and appplied health research: Digital Transformation, Health & Care Workforce, Commercial Research, Neighbourhood Health and Delivering Research & Innovation.
Sumaiyah explains:
‘The event was split into two with many breaks in between the speakers and panels.
We attended the event and listened to a few keynote speakers as well as panellists before attending selected workshops. Listening to the panel’s understanding of neighbourhood health and their ideas for innovation was particularly interesting. Although the entire day was quite clinical, I enjoyed learning more about the processes within the NHS and NIHR from Professor Lucy Chappel and other panellists.
Within the second half of the day, I especially enjoyed listening to academics explain the increased interests in academia from students alongside the issue of keeping students in the UK field compared to others. Additionally, from the Digital transformation workshop, I was intrigued to listen to people’s internal challenges and successes with the digital side of their work, and the way they would overcome these issues.
This broadened my knowledge on what the NIHR does and how research in the health field is carried out. This event brought academics, the private sector, clinicians, and charities together, in a room of passion and determination.’
Vlad reflects:
‘ The conference was an opportunity for us to learn from the speakers and panelists, who come from both medical & academic, and humanitarian backgrounds, bringing their perspectives on the healthcare system and opportunities to innovate it in order to improve health outcomes and experiences of service users.
The part of the conference that stood out to me, is our first workshop, which was about Neighbourhood Health. At the beginning of the session, we had a brief philosophical overview of what neighbourhood health is, the role of hospitals, and whether we need to be so “obsessed” about hospitals, or are there other ways to improve health outcomes? Then, we proceeded to the activity part of the workshop, where we had to look at different geographical areas on our planet, or out there, and discuss what would be the optimal solutions to establish the neighbourhood health in that particular area (or don’t have any), and what it would look like.’
We look forward to attending more events like this in the future.
ID: workshop activity involving post it notes
ID: a powerpoint slide with the title Neighbourhood Health