by Health Call on 21st October 2021Health Call at HETT 2021

Healthcare Excellence Through Technology (HETT) is one of the key digital events which made a welcome return this autumn – and this time as a physical event.

At Health Call, we were invited by our local Academic Health Science Network because we are part of their Digital North Accelerator programme to attend as one of 20 or so suppliers to be part of their Innovation Zone. As an NHS-owned organisation with very little to brag about when it comes to marketing budgets, we jumped at the chance to be part of the AHSN Network stand.

The pandemic has brought many challenges, one for a fast-growing digital health company like us has been the ability to get out there and network with our existing and potential customers. We have gone from 6 to about 26 employees in the space of the pandemic and whilst this exponential growth has been in a huge part down to the AHSN, it has also made networking and relationship building really challenging.

Having the chance to have a stand and a speaking slot on the Innovation Zone was a great opportunity for us. Not only did we get to speak to several people involved at the center at NHS England and Improvement and NHSX, so we have been able to further develop our relationships with them, we also met lots of new contacts from across the country.

At Health Call we are looking to scale up our business, whilst not forgetting our roots in the North East and North Cumbria, we understand the requirements from our clinical and patient community and we know that lots of our products could be implemented elsewhere in the country. Having this opportunity to participate at HETT will help us to enable our strategy to grow our business outside the region.

We made some great contacts with people across the country, but also were able to connect with other suppliers in the Innovator Zone. There are few examples where we can collaborate and develop our services further. These are connections that we otherwise would not have made. A lot of the contacts we did make were with senior decision makers, so being able to influence at that level is a real bonus for us.

We found a lot of interest in our care home solution and wound care where we have gained a lot of traction in our region and have some great evidence, we have been able to share to support business cases. We also had the welcome opportunity to present to the Innovation Zone which our managing director, Ian Dove did on the first day. He was also hijacked by the Innovation Agency and recorded this podcast on our recent double award [insert link to EIS blog] win at the Excellence in Supply awards.

So, for the first time in 18 months, our team were delighted to be able hit the road, make new connections and help us to scale up our business outside of our region.