HealthTech

Liverpool scale-up, Kids’ Health Matters, has successfully scaled its online healthcare programme following support from LCR Health Matters.  

This comes amid workforce challenges posed to women’s and children’s NHS services, as the COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions on how best to upskill healthcare professionals. 

Kids’ Health Matters is a community interest company leading the transformation of the advanced clinical practice workforce in women’s and children’s health, through service redesign, education, and new role development.  

The delivery of the programme will look to upskill health care workers and improve access to training for junior doctors to improve the care of women and children in hospitals, and in the community.   

The programme is currently on target to deliver 113 advanced clinical practitioners in paediatrics, midwifery and neonatal critical care.  

Using a blended learning method, where the delivery of educational content is both online or face-to-face, the Kids’ Health Matters programme has been able to access trainees even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.  

It gives trainees the flexibility of accessing the training in their own time, as well as interacting with other participating students.   

With being so focused on delivering its educational programmes and workforce development, Kids’ Health Matters needed support from the Health Matters programme to build up the commercial side of the business, particularly with accessing resources and creating connections in order to scale. 

The Health Matters programme has helped Kids’ Health Matters produce real-world validation, which will provide evidence of the commercial value of the programme and the difference it makes in the health sector. This will allow the Kids’ Health Matters programme to have conversations with key stakeholders in the NHS, to drive sales and scale the business.   

“The Kids’ Health Matters programme is a great initiative, and its plans to scale come at a crucial time for the NHS, as I believe we will increasingly see more not-for-profit businesses coming together to provide solutions for the challenges faced by the health sector, said Andy Cairns, programme lead of Health Matters. 

Co-founder Katie Barnes said: “There are two more cohorts starting next year and a new collaboration with the School of Paediatrics, which will use our Advance e-learning platform to expand access and enhance educational content for all paediatric medical trainees in the North West.  

“With the help of Andy Cairns and the Health Matters team we have been able to identify our key value proposition for the health sector.  

Our ability to manoeuvre and adapt so quickly, coupled with the real-world validation work we have undertaken, has given us a scalable product that can provide a service to benefit and improve the way healthcare is delivered across the NHS.” 

COVID-19