THE small dedicated team at Warrington & Halton Hospitals who devised a special “black box” to treat COVID-19 patients and cut death rates, have won a national award for innovation.
Warrington & Halton Hospitals Teaching Hospitals won an Innovation in Adversity Award from the London Business School’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Following a public vote, Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals received the Peoples Choice award for the team who invented the ‘Black Box’ to treat COVID-19 patients.
The fifth anniversary of the Real Innovation Awards 2020 saw an extraordinary year, with entries to the Real Innovation Awards (RIA) featuring many organisations and individuals who demonstrated unbelievable tenacity in the face of enormous obstacles in their mission to make the world a better place.
The annual London Business School awards ceremony celebrates innovation and the individuals who often sacrifice comfortable and lucrative corporate lives and careers to try and offer something of purpose and value to society, whether it benefits their neighbourhood or someone else’s.
This year’s awards programme was organised by the School’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE).
The RIA awards recognises innovation through six categories, with Warrington & Halton Hospitals winning a new category, Innovation in Adversity, to recognise innovations forged in response to a crisis.
A small dedicated team at Warrington Hospital led the way earlier this year in cutting COVID-19 death rates with ‘black boxes’ normally used for sleep disorders.
Clinicians at the hospital discovered a way around using more intrusive ventilators with patients appearing to have a far quicker patient recovery rate.
The small team of seven medics modified devices known as “black boxes” which normally treat sleep apnoea – a condition when breathing stops and starts whilst sleeping.
One of the hospital’s consultants Dr Mark Forrest said at the time that they had started from “ground zero” in how to manage the pandemic in the area.
The team made an early decision to try to avoid ventilation by switching to CPAP machines (continuous positive airway pressure) where the device pumps oxygen, under a constant pressure, into the lungs through a close-fitted face mask.
Commenting on the news that the team had won the national award Hospital Chairman Steve McGuirk posted on twitter: “We are absolutely thrilled to win this award. Thank you everyone…”
We are absolutely thrilled to win this award. Thank you everyone and thank you @warringtonworld and @warringtonnews for publicising and encouraging: Real Innovation Awards 2020 winners announced: https://t.co/KwhO6gmruP via @LBS
— Steve McGuirk CBE,DL (@WHHFTChair) October 13, 2020
Warrington Hospital leading the way in cutting COVID-19 death rates
