The lab team were kindly invited to speak at an Innovation Scouts event hosted by the Academic Health Science Network for the North West.

What's an Innovation Scout? Scouts are “innovation champions”, providing a local point of contact for NHS staff in their organisation regarding innovation and best practice.

We are, of course, no experts when it comes to health care but we think we might know a teeny weeny pea sized amount about innovation - so were asked to come along to talk about implementation.

The event was held at Alder Hey Childrens hospital's hugely impressive innovation hub.

It's full of funky bits of tech to aid colleagues understanding of the issue they are trying to solve. Seeing a 3D printed spine deformity is an incredibly powerful tool when treating the patient it relates to. Using VR to inspect and even go inside the human heart to look around the problem allows surgeons to understand what they are looking at before any surgery is performed. These are just two examples of great innovative techniques Alder Hey are working on.

We hope we have given a bit of insight into how we implement innovation, with a big caveat that we aren't always successful ourselves. Ultimately it becomes a game of understanding how an individual culture works and adapting your approach accordingly.

What's the outcome of the visit? Housing , like health, is struggling to adopt tech innovations. We just can't keep up with the pace of change. We've agreed to stay in touch to see if working together we can fast track the adoption for the benefit of our customers.

We thoroughly enjoyed meeting lovely people and nosing around the (very cool looking) innovation space. Thanks to Juliette Kumar for inviting us and Jason Taylor for the lab tour.

Amy