BEST USE OF DATA
Dental Services, NHS Business Services Authority
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, NHS Primary Care Dentistry and the patients they serve were severely impacted. Procedures and processes that increased the risk of COVID-19 transmission were stopped except for urgent treatments. NHS Business Services Authority develop a triangulated dashboard identifying practices carrying out urgent dental treatment, workforce need – who was available to work and quality assurance. This dashboard is now a key element supporting NHSE&I dental delivery and will influence policy going forward.
We make really complex financial data understandable and we enable reconciliation to be achieved within minutes. Kani is providing an end-to-end reconciliation solution which gives the customer the means to compare their transactional totals against what is settled by Mastercard or Visa, as well as against their bank account, and give them a better view and understanding of their performance.
The DWP had a real problem to solve and through their innovative use of data, they have focused on how to make things better. DWP are collaborating for success by unleashing insights from unstructured data to help drive a culture of putting their users at the heart of both policy and product design; making a real difference to the lives of people, every day.
Sage has partnered with two innovative North East start-ups to transform their Code of Conduct training for 13,000 colleagues across the globe. Working with Sub 10 they have created an enjoyable and effective learning experience, with reflective moments throughout. Using Wordnerds’ AI-based sentiment analysis they have analysed learners’ emotional responses to the training, allowing them to understand and measure behavioural change indicators, and ensure that all colleagues understand how to “do the right thing”.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION sponsored by
globalbridge is a single digital platform through which young people, schools, FE/HE, employers, and apprenticeship providers can communicate, in a way that doesn’t currently exist. We are Purpose-for-Profit – We believe that opportunity should be available to talented young people from every background.
At Home Group and within our Information Systems department, we’re creating an environment where everyone feels confident and supported to be themselves at work. Our aim is to maintain an active commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion as we know it is our colleague’s diversity which makes us stronger and when people are at their brilliant best. What makes us different as individuals is what makes us more powerful and influential as a group.
When people don’t feel safe, supported or emotionally secure, they cannot perform. In taking the necessary actions to address these issues, Covid-19 has proven to be a defining moment for the development of our inclusive culture. Through greater visibility and authenticity in leadership communication, coupled with real-time listening with rapid action, complemented by a tangible focus on wellbeing and enriched with a real commitment to learning, we accelerated our colleague engagement journey for all.
TechUPWomen is a collaborative initiative that took 100 women from minority groups, including women of colour, women with disabilities, women with dependants and LGBTQ+ women, living in the North and Midlands and put them through a free 6 month tech retraining programme. Working closely with industry TechUPWomen provides intensive technology and career development training, with the aim of helping participants access entry level job roles or internships in the tech sector or gain career promotions.
GROWTH EXPLOSION sponsored by
Aspire is an award-winning business communications and cloud services provider. We have launched the North East’s full fibre 100 gigabit network which gives North East businesses access to the fastest and most reliable connectivity solutions available in the UK. Growing organically year on year, our headcount now exceeds 150. Quality service delivery and support is at the heart of everything we do; in the past 12 months, our Net Promoter Score has averaged +84, which is deemed ‘world-class’.
The Everflow Group, based in Teesside, has achieved exceptional growth since launching in 2015. It comprises of the UK’s fastest organically growing water retailer, Everflow Water, and the company that created the pioneering software behind its success, Everflow Tech. The group has expanded significantly over the past year, opening multiple new offices in the region and expanding its employee base by 89% over the past 12 months.
IoT North has grown exceptionally as a community over 2019-2020, as a hub to enable businesses as sellers, partners, buyers and hobbyists to understand and share the new technology and industry insights. IoT north is moving to a marketplace for partners and buyers to accelerate the adoption if IoT by removing the technical jargon and delivering a clarity to the value of IoT.
We have achieved 40% year on year growth since we launched in 2013. Last year we exceeded our targets, boosting turnover by 60% to reach £3m turnover, and expanded into Scotland and the South. We increased staff numbers from 22 to 37, celebrated the first successful leaver from our Graduate Training Academy scheme, launched a new managed services practice, and created the region’s first Digital Business Den.
Trench Networks are changing the face of 4G connectivity on construction sites with our state-of-the-art Outpost network solution. A bespoke system that puts performance, security and flexibility front and centre, we enable modern digital working practices on projects of all sizes that supports the “New Normal”.
INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR sponsored by
The Everflow Group is on a mission to make utilities simple. Its software solutions are designed by the industry, for the industry. They have transformed the way Everflow Water operates and are now available to all water retailers in the market. The innovative culture has lead to the group’s success. In the last year alone, it has expanded significantly, opening multiple new offices in the region and expanding its employee base by 89% over the past 12 months.
For the first time applications on-board a train can run on the same hardware, working in harmony even when they are using shared resources. The Nomad Digital ‘Onboard Data Centre’ is cloud computing at the edge, bringing computer data storage and processing on-board where it is needed. This virtualised on-board computing platform helps train builders create trains for the future, provide a seamless passenger experience and evolve with the technology that is all around us.
The bio-inspired, flow-based and intelligent Botnet Detection System achieved an average detection accuracy of 99.8% across bot datasets like CTU-13, ISOT 2010 and ISCX 2014, with a false positive rate of 0%. This model was used to develop a software prototype and uses network flow-based behavioural modelling to facilitate the binary classification of bot network activity, where the detection is independent of underlying communications architectures and payload-based detection evasion mechanisms.
INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS sponsored by
We have used homegrown talent to build a product that is of value to organisations across the globe. Our product is able to be delivered and incorporated by our staff in our Newcastle upon Tyne headquarters and has an almost unlimited growth potential.
Small Sage engineering team based entirely in Newcastle has huge global impact, by developing from scratch an innovative, configurable, secure cloud payments solution that will be used in each of the 23 global markets which Sage operates within (and is already live in the UK, US, Australia and South Africa). Sage customers benefit from being able to automatically process payments, in their preferred currency, using partners they are familiar with and trust.
VEO is transforming teaching practice globally. COVID-19 has forced teachers to drastically adapt their practice to teach students under lockdown conditions virtually. This is not what teachers were trained for and universities do not know how to prepare teachers for effective pedagogy in lockdown. VEO has partnered with NCEE to provide a free portal for teachers and educational researchers from all over the world to share what great teaching looks like in lockdown. The videos will be used to research and provide insights to school leaders across the globe.
PROJECT OF THE YEAR (Public Sector / Not for Profit)
Difrent – ‘NHSX Home Testing’
Difrent and NHSX joined the fight against COVID-19, helping prevent NHS and key worker organisations from becoming overwhelmed by getting staff who were in isolation, with unconfirmed Coronavirus symptoms, tested from home so they could return to the front line faster following negative results. Together, we successfully delivered the COVID-19 home test ordering service in just 8 days, which distributed 1million test kits across the UK within 3 months.
Newcastle University – ‘GetPPE NCL’
GetPPE NCL brought together Newcastle, Northumbria and Sunderland universities’ digital fabrication and design experts, with local commercial printing partners, to design and support production of vital protective equipment for the NHS. A new visor design which can be mass-produced was made freely available on an open source basis, we 3D-printed thousands of visor headbands, and in total around 30,000 items of PPE were provided to front-line health workers responding to COVID-19.
NHS Business Services Authority – ‘NHS Learning Support Fund’
In December’19 the new government’s manifesto committed new training grant payments for student nurses, paramedics and allied health professionals (AHPs), becoming a flagship policy. Delivering this was high profile for the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA); the complexity of the scheme coupled with tight timescales would have been difficult at any time, but to have implemented it successfully in the middle of the greatest public health crisis in over 100 years is even more incredible.
Northumbria University – ‘Promoting independence through technology-enabled homes’
Northumbria University and Home Group collaborated on a “smart” house prototype in the Gateshead Innovation Village to enable vulnerable adults to live independently aided by innovative technologies. The project produced many innovations such as a personal voice assistant, smart buttons providing personal training, and a mood calendar, aiding customers with learning disabilities, older people, and mental health issues. The results will support Home Group’s development of future smart home technology for care and independent living.
PROJECT OF THE YEAR (Corporate)
Accenture – ‘NHS Digital’
Within a period of 7 days, and with the use of an innovative rapid deployment approach, the Microsoft Teams integration was built, tested and a full support model implemented enabling all 1.2 million users across the NHS to securely send instant messages, complete audio & video calls and host virtual meetings between users across England. The platform is playing a vital role in keeping care teams connected across remote locations.
Sage Payroll – ‘Job Retention Scheme (JRS) Module and COVID 19 Response’
Payroll is the unsung hero behind the UK economy – 2020 has seen huge and rapid changes in payroll requirements from a late Budget on 11th March impacting the 20-21 tax year to fast moving high frequency change through the evolving Job Retention Scheme (JRS) for furloughed employees. The Sage Payroll Development team has been at the forefront of addressing those needs for our customers who use our software to pay in the region of 8m UK employees.
Waterstons – ‘Eclipse’
Waterstons, working with water supplier Everflow, produced Eclipse; a utilities industry disruptive customer-focussed portal covering sales, customer management, settlement reconciliation and billing. Waterstons worked in partnership with Everflow to create this unique portal, which supported their rapid growth through scale-up, to the point that they were independent and able to spin-out their own technology company, Everflow Tech. Taking Eclipse into the next phase of growth, Everflow Tech now manage, develop and operate the software.
RISING STAR
Eilyne Mallari – NHS Business Services Authority
Joining the NHSBSA as a university placement student, Eilyne wasn’t one for sitting on the sidelines. Throwing herself in at the deep end supporting high profile services, increasing her knowledge and skills and successfully progressing within the organisation. As if this wasn’t enough, she has taken a leading role within our outreach and volunteering activities, mentored new apprentices, achieved a first class honours degree and her final year project was recommended as a journal paper.
Fareeha Usman – Being Woman
“Fareeha is an incredible person, committed to changing the world by going above and beyond every day to bring such fantastic impact. An exciting rising superstar of the North East tech scene, I can’t wait to see her realise her incredible potential changing all of our lives for the better.”
Professor Sue Black OBE, Professor of Computer Science and Technology Evangelist, Durham University
Katie Shannon – Accenture
Since completing her apprenticeship with Accenture, Katie has continued to go from strength to strength. She is able to balance the demands of her full time client engagement with extra pieces of work she undertakes to give back to the wider Accenture workforce and society. As one of only 12 members of the Junior Technology Board, Katie chose to support Tech 4 Good initiatives – organising and speaking at events to address the issue of food poverty. Katie support ongoing training initiatives across the Newcastle campus, helping others to develop technology skills in areas such as AWS and RPA.
Lizzie Quinn – NHS Business Services Authority
Choosing someone with no prior digital experience or skills to join a fast paced and demanding team like ours, could have been considered a little crazy but appointing Lizzie was inspired. Within 6 months of joining, she was delivering critical COVID-19 services at pace to support the government response to the coronavirus pandemic. Bright, keen, enthusiastic, reliable, hardworking, bursting with ideas and a great colleague – Lizzie is a leader in the making.
SKILLS DEVELOPER sponsored by
As a specialist provider of digital and tech apprenticeships, talent development is both the service we offer and the driving force behind our organisation. Baltic Apprenticeships are committed to closing the digital skills gap in the North East and beyond. In 2020, we combined our long term skills development strategy with reactive innovation to deliver high quality skills training, create opportunity for young people, and support our apprentice employers during the coronavirus lockdown period.
Sunderland Software City’s Go Reboot programme is designed to help individuals take their first steps into a digital career, raising awareness of the digital industry and career opportunities in the North East. This bootcamp style programme sees participants work in teams to find solutions to industry specific challenges, meet industry representatives, visit work places and develop skills that will support their employability within the digital sector with the precision and efficiency of their military trained analytical team.
TechUPWomen is a collaborative initiative that took 100 women from minority groups, including women of colour, women with disabilities, women with dependants and LGBTQ+ women, living in the North and Midlands and put them through a free 6 month tech retraining programme. Working closely with industry TechUPWomen provides intensive technology and career development training, with the aim of helping participants access entry level job roles or internships in the tech sector or gain career promotions.
TECH FOR GOOD sponsored by
The global pandemic was a challenge met by Home Group IS. Our team kept the lights on and then some. We’ve worked to support our customers and colleagues even more so than usual. We thought outside the box, implementing a number of solutions. We put our values at the core to find practical COMMERCIAL solutions. Being ACCOUNTABLE, we worked at pace (ENERGISED), and above all we were CARING. We made it happen!
NHS Business Services Authority
This SMS text messaging service was established at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet the need of quickly sending vital communications to the most vulnerable groups within society. NHSBSA were able to iterate the service and share feedback from users to help refine the messaging during a time of confusion and information overload, and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.
South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust supported by the Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria
The UK has the highest child asthma death rate in Europe. The National Review of Asthma Deaths(NRAD) concluded that 46% are preventable. We have developed a Paediatric Emergency Department Asthma Assessment Tool(PEDAAT), using NRAD Standards, to identify high-risk children with asthma. PEDAAT has combined with BReATHE(Beating Regional Asthma through Health Education) to introduce BeatAsthma+, a Health Improvement Initiative, into GP Practices, enabling early identification, management and treatment with delivery of an education programme to families(www.beatasthma.co.uk).