Leicester researchers nominated for prestigious health science award
University researchers from the Children’s long term ventilation team at Leicester’s Hospitals have been nominated for a prestigious East Midlands Academic Health Science Network award.
On Thursday 5 November, the team, which includes Dr Hitesh Pandya (pictured) from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, will find out if they are overall category winners at the annual celebration of innovation in healthcare for the ‘Innovation through integration award’.
The Children’s long term ventilation team have developed a collaborative hospital-community partnership model to improve health care for children and young people who need long term ventilation.
The team have succeeded in improving quality of life for patients who are in a situation where their condition may deteriorate quickly whilst being treated at home by developing a new collaborative network between themselves and the community.
The new system allows the community Diana team to flag up potential issues and resolve them before destabilisation occurs which has reduced local readmission rates.
Dr Pandya said: “We are the forefront of this support both regionally and nationally. Services for technology dependant children are developing and the needs of children are very complex and multi-dimensional. Moreover, there are increasing numbers of children who require our help.”
The team aims to: highlight the needs of children; define and improve on factors that impact on the quality of life of technology-dependant children; and reduce the impact of chest infections with uncommon and multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria.