Co-working at Carnegie Innovation

On Wednesday 26th August, we opened up Fairfax Hall on Leeds Beckett University's Headingley campus for our first co-working day with Carnegie Innovation, the university's sport and health tech incubator. The idea was simple: a relaxed space to work from, a chance to meet others building in health tech, sport tech and women's health, and a few short, informal sessions to drop into along the way.

Here's a summary of what was covered, for anyone who couldn't make it, or who wants a recap of the day.

A look inside the new Carnegie School of Sport

The day opened with a tour of the new £45 million Carnegie School of Sport building, led by John Kirkby, Sport Health Tech Incubator Manager at Carnegie Innovation. It's a genuinely impressive space, taking in the Strength and Conditioning Facility, Environmental Chambers, Respiratory Laboratory, DXA Body Composition and Bone Density Unit, Sport and Exercise Therapy Clinic, Human Movement Laboratory, Biochemistry Labs and Nutrition Laboratory, a real reminder of the depth of applied research expertise sitting right here in Leeds.

For more info on Carnegie Innovation, head across to their website.

Validation, evidence and health inequalities, with Professor Anne-Marie Bagnall

Professor Anne-Marie Bagnall, Director of the Centre for Health Promotion Research (CHPR) at Leeds Beckett, gave us an overview of the centre's work, from its Healthy Communities, Health Inequalities, and Evidence and Evaluation research themes, through to genuinely practical guidance for founders: how to find credible evidence through NICE and the "What Works" centres, why testing face validity with real users matters, how to avoid innovations that widen the health gap, and how to build in evaluation properly, from feasibility study through to pilot and comparison groups.

We'll be working on some further resources off the back of the topics Anne-Marie covered, more on that soon.

Connecting with academic expertise, with Dr Helena Last

Dr Helena Last, In-Path Relationship Manager, introduced founders to In-Path, West Yorkshire's academic brokerage service. Led by Leeds Beckett University in partnership with the University of Leeds, the University of Bradford and the University of Huddersfield, In-Path connects health, wellbeing and digital businesses with academic expertise, specialist facilities, funding routes and student talent across the region's universities, a single point of access into a lot of what founders often struggle to find on their own.

If you'd like to explore what's available, you can learn more here.

Designing accessible services and products, with Joshua Gardner

Joshua Gardner, Senior Communications and Engagement Manager at NHS England, gave a session on accessible design that left a lot of us rethinking assumptions we didn't know we were making. One example he shared was a foot pedal bin fitted inside a disabled toilet, a room built specifically for people who may not have full use of their legs or balance, containing a fixture that assumes exactly that. It's the kind of detail that's easy to walk past without noticing, which is precisely the point: most accessibility failures aren't dramatic, they're small, unexamined defaults that nobody thought to question. The key message: build accessibility in from day one, rather than retrofitting it later.

Some useful links Joshua shared on the day:

• GOV.UK Accessibility Guidance: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service 

• NHS Digital Service Manual Accessibility Guidance: https://service-manual.nhs.uk/accessibility 

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/ 

We'll be working on some further resources off the back of the topics Joshua covered, more on that soon.

What's next

A few things coming out of the day:

• We're looking at building out a section of our website with practical resources for founders on evidence, validation and accessible design, more detail on this soon

• Our next co-working day is set for Wednesday 22nd October, speakers and topics to be confirmed

• If you weren't able to join us this time but like the sound of it, sign up to our mailing list here, so you don't miss the next one

Tell us what you want to hear more of

This was our first session of this kind, and we'd love to know what's actually useful. If there's a topic you'd like covered in more depth, or something you wished we'd spent more time on, drop us a comment or send us an email, we're building the next one around what you tell us.

Thank you again to everyone who came along, and to Anne-Marie, Helena, Joshua and John for giving up their time to share their expertise with us.