Back in December 2023, our Wellbeing Lead, Lucy Holmes put together two applications to HSJ Digital Awards for our Diabetes Prehabilitation service and this week, we can share that we were shortlisted for both categories!

They are two very competitive categories: ‘Supporting Elective Recovery through Digital‘ and ‘Generating Impact in Population Health through Digital‘ and seeing our name and service sitting alongside large trusts and organisations is equally humbling and exciting, especially as there were 343 entries to this year’s awards.

The HSJ Digital Awards was created as a way to celebrate how digital products and services can have such a positive, transformative impact on the NHS; bringing people together who work hard to better help patients, staff and the system’s wallet. So, having our local Wirral community-focused service acknowledged for its impact on people living with diabetes and helping them get optimised for their surgeries is quite the pat on our backs.

Of course, the service wouldn’t be even able to apply for such awards if it wasn’t for the continued support of Graphnet Health, Surgery Hero and Wirral University Teaching Hospital. By using their digital tools, our team can help more people, more quickly by not having to only wait for a referral and reduce the number of surgeries getting postponed.

Our Director, Karen Livesey, offers some further context:

Our diabetes prehabilitation project proactively identifies people with diabetes waiting for surgery through the CIPHA tool and provides clinical and non-clinical support to help people prepare for a safe surgery. The project uses a population health management approach by incorporating a digital tool that supports elective recovery – allowing for more easily managed surgery waiting lists.

 

It was really difficult to decide which category to enter so we chose both! This is such a big deal for us as we are 5 years old this year so we think an award would be a fitting way to celebrate, let’s hope the judges think that too.

There is still another stage we have to go through before the ceremony on 6th June – we are invited to present our entries to the judges and explain why we deserve to win. We’re remaining hopeful that Lucy and the team’s enthusiasm in the presentations will be able to convey how deserving of a service it is.