Alder Hey teams up with NeedleSmart to enhance clinical healthcare for children in our area

A new partnership with NeedleSmart will empower Alder Hey to accelerate clinical innovation and expand technological healthcare capabilities

NeedleSmart, a globally unique solution to needle safety, sustainability, and closed loop data, today announced it is entering a new co-development partnership with Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, one of Europe’s leading paediatric healthcare institutions.

Through this alliance, Alder Hey will work directly with NeedleSmart as they bring forward their multi-facetted hardware and software solutions to the healthcare markets.

Alder Hey will work alongside the team at NeedleSmart in a co-development plan that consists of three phases:

• Clinician and patient safety enhancement
• Sustainability to recycling pilot
• Clinical workflow and data transactions

The NeedleSmart PRO, NeedleSmart’s flagship product, uses unique and patented technology to take a used and contaminated hypodermic needle immediately after use and in just 6 seconds, heats the needle to in excess of 1300∞C. At that precise moment, the NeedleSmart PRO compresses the needle, reforming it into a safe “ball” of metal at the end of the syringe.  The resulting “non-sharp” is free from virus and bacteria, and with no needle in sight, what was a hypodermic needle is no longer capable of becoming another Needle Stick Injury (NSI).

Alongside the immediate safety enhancements to clinicians, using the NeedleSmart PRO product may well be about to form the cornerstone of a cutting-edge program of sustainability that may in the medium term offer the possibility of recycling in a market that is currently entirely carbon positive.

The final piece to the NeedleSmart puzzle is the introduction of their data agnostic software platform CWS and DVS (Clinical Workflow System / Digital Vaccination System).  DVS is just one of the many possibilities presented by CWS, a software platform built around digitising the clinical event at the exact moment the needle is destroyed, allowing a unique, data neutral record to be created in real time that can be pushed directly to any medical record software.

NeedleSmart will work with the innovation team and wider clinical teams at Alder Hey to ensure the product adds real value to the clinical environment, offering efficiencies and benefits wherever possible.

Image by Gareth Jones

Claire Liddy, Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust said:

“At Alder Hey we want to ensure that we are always sitting on the leading edge of clinical innovation.  In the case of NeedleSmart, we have found a product solution that offers a number of innovation drivers to build from.  The team at NeedleSmart are constantly challenging conventional thinking around sharps disposal and what benefits could be achieved at that moment.

“We want to ensure we are associated with businesses that have the potential to make a real difference.  NeedleSmart is one such business, at a time when co-worker safety, sustainability, and innovation are so important, disruptive technologies have a critical role to play.  We have been assessing the viability of NeedleSmart in the background during our first Covid-19 vaccination program and look forward to working together on a more formal basis”.

Cliff Kirby

Cliff Kirby, CEO of NeedleSmart, said;

“Coming from a product development background, I know all too well that any product only succeeds with the blessing of the end user.  This ethos sits at the centre of the Alder Hey Innovation Centre and we are really excited to work with the team on a co-development strategy that could have such a huge and positive impact in the medical environment.  Having watched the team at Alder Hey deliver the first round of Covid-19 vaccinations, it is an absolute privilege to be associated with an organisation who quite clearly take a challenge head on and deliver a solution in a way that is second to none.  Alongside this, we have been blown away by the enthusiasm and ideas brought forward, not only with regard to safety but equally to the wider sustainability target of carbon net zero by 2032 within the NHS.  This partnership represents a huge step forward for NeedleSmart”.

Alder Hey is the first accredited Investing in Children hospital in the UK. It has a dedicated patient experience programme which includes the award-winning Alder Hey Arts involving music therapy, dance programmes, storytelling and animation projects. It is also one of a few hospitals to have a Children and Young Person’s Forum.

Alder Hey opened a new hospital ‘Alder Hey in the Park’ in 2015. Europe’s first hospital in a park, the new facility provides a purpose-built, unique and world class healing environment for children and young people.

Alder Hey is supported by The Alder Hey Children’s Charity which aims to raise vital funds for lifesaving equipment, research projects and patient experience initiatives.

For more information visit www.alderhey.nhs.uk and www.alderheycharity.org