Healthcare Awards Most Successful On Record



The Annual Healthcare Technologies Awards and Lecture took place in London last November, where delegates had the opportunity to hear from guest speaker Douglas Crombie Anderson OBE, who relayed the story of the creation of a new medical technology that saves patients sight and produced a successful public floated company. The evening also saw the winners of the William James and J.A Lodge awards present a synopsis of their work.



The event, which has been hosted and organised by the IET Healthcare Technologies Network for over ten years, saw a leap in interest in 2013, with applicants for the awards reaching an all time high.



Coordinating the awards and speakers



Network member Dr Daniel Abásolo oversaw and coordinated the whole awards process and was also behind inviting past European Inventor of the Year Douglas Anderson to be the event’s guest speaker.



“The network drew up a shortlist and I proposed Douglas Anderson as I knew him through shared investors for his hugely successful company and my own start-up,” explains David. “I invited him and acted as host – supported by IET staff, whilst my colleagues worked on the awards and marketing,” he adds.



Over 40 students and professionals attended the event and the network had around 25 applicants to the awards, which was an all time high. The network believes this is down to volunteers putting in time and effort to better promote the awards and lecture.



Promoting award applications



“We knew we needed to actively work to prime out individual networks and get the word out more effectively,” he continues, “ and I think the individuals on the committee were very motivated to advertise the awards and lecture as widely as they could using their own contacts. Through these efforts we ended up doubling the number of entries we had the previous year and it was very hard to choose because they were all of a very high standard!”



Widening their reach



Clearly the network is hugely proud of its success story and hopes to continue growing interest for not only 2014’s awards but all of its events. There are discussions about joining forces with other institutions to help promotion and to also make the best possible use of the marketing opportunities open to them.



“As a network we’re trying to be a bit more social media and IT savvy about how we advertise ourselves to our members. Even though we are an international network belonging to an international institution it’s very easy to end up catering to a small group of UK universities and people connected to them, and we’re trying to make sure that we live up to the expectation of being international and representing international membership,” says Peter.



The 2013 Healthcare Awards.



The Dennis Hill Award winner 2013 - Joachim Behar, Oxford University



The William James Award winner 2013 - Dr Alex Casson, University of Manchester



The J. A. Lodge Award winner 2013 - Johanna-Marie Best, Surrey University



Watch the guest speaker and award winners talks online.