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Launch of our Health Innovation Fellowship Programme

22 May 2019

THET is pleased to announce that four fellowships have been awarded to UK health workers who are looking to foster and develop an innovative idea conceived during time spent working or volunteering in a low or middle-income country (LMIC).

The fellowships form part of our new Health Innovation Platform (HIP), through which we will champion outstanding ideas, tools and techniques which we believe have the potential to transform health systems in both low resource settings and in the U.K. We believe that investing in innovation has the potential to revolutionise healthcare through the development of effective solutions to global health challenges.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Health Education England, each fellow has been awarded £3,000 to travel to their LMIC partner institution to develop, test and implement their innovation.

Through a process of internal shortlisting and external review by our distinguished steering group, the following individuals have been selected for the fellowship programme:

Arjun Chandna

Based in the Cambodia-Oxford Medical Research Unit, Arjun will be travelling to Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia to develop a triage tool to support health workers in resource-constrained settings who are faced with the difficult, and often costly, decision to admit or refer febrile children to hospital.

Jienchi Dorward

Travelling to South Africa from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford, Jienchi will be partnering with the Bethesda Hospital and the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research to integrate new point-of-care tests into novel, community HIV programmes with the aim to streamline treatment monitoring, decongest clinics and improve outcomes for patients and healthcare systems in Africa.

Shane Duffy

Shane is based at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and will be partnering with the Quito Hospital in Masaka, Uganda to test a decision support technology called MedNav which replaces guidelines with real time auditory and visual clues to guide emergency workers.

Ryan Ghita

Through a partnership with the Northumbria NHS Trust and the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, Tanzania, Ryan will bring hernia mesh – which has successfully been used in LMICs for over 20 years – to the NHS in an effort to generate significant cost savings without compromising outcomes.

We look forward to providing further updates in the coming months!

I am delighted to be awarded a Health Innovation Platform Fellowship and excited to take our innovation forward. With the support of THET I am able to bring some of my volunteering experience and innovation back to the NHS. I would like to thank THET for recognising the project and its potential. I would also like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Health Education England for funding this fellowship. For without such funding, innovations and overseas partnerships like this would not be possible.

Ryan Ghita - Health Innovation Fellow