Creating a win:win dialogue between NHS and pharma industry to support the spread and scale of innovation

A revolutionary new way for pharma companies, and other businesses, to tap into the pockets of excellence in NHS staff delivery launches today. Just eight months after BOB.health was made available to NHS staff, sponsored impact stories are now published. 

These ‘impact stories’, told by NHS staff members, are practical accounts of how to introduce medicine into a local system or how to redesign a pathway or service. Pharma and NHS collaboration initiatives, such as Joint Working projects, are unpacked, supporting the dissemination of the lessons learnt to NHS stakeholders in other localities.

BOB.health is working with five leading pharma companies, including Boehringer Ingelheim, who have already bought into the concept of BOB. January 2021, will see the first batch of pharma sponsored stories published. Each impact story is a practical guide of the planning, implementation, and embedding of a change and also covers outputs and outcomes. The NHS author tells their account, including how they mobilised their colleagues, and can share useful supporting documents that will help an ‘adopter’ move faster to deliver change.

Neil Crump, BOB.health co-founder, said: “NHS staff interaction has permanently changed, prompted by COVID-19 and the shift to digital interaction. We offer pharma a new channel to profile their medicines and active contribution to the system. We provide them with a meaningful and measurable return on investment”.

Marc Southern, BOB.health co-founder, said: “Our sponsored offering helps support both the embedding and adoption of innovation in the NHS, while reducing the burden on the staff introducing them. NHS staff typically set off with a blank page. A BOB impact story means that they no longer have to reinvent the wheel, they can learn from staff elsewhere who have successfully implemented a change to a high standard. Replicating best practice is now made easy”.

The first of two sponsored stories on the platform is from Austin Gibbs, Lab Director, The Allan Lab, Jersey General Hospital, whose story tells of how he and his team introduced the Concentric digital patient consent tool for elective surgery. The second sponsored story is from Dr Indira Natarajan, Consultant Stroke Physician and Clinical Director Neurosciences, Royal Stoke University Hospital, who details how he and his team implemented Sky Medical Technology’s  geko™ device for the prevention of post-stroke venous thromboembolism.

Both impact stories, as with all content on BOB, are written by the person that led the change and are accessible to NHS staff, Academic Health and Science Networks (AHSNs) and other verified and approved non-commercial organisations serving the NHS.

NHS supplier revenues enable the platform to be entirely free for NHS organisations and individual staff to write, read and share stories of general improvement and making change happen in the NHS.