A SURGEON from Trafford has emerged unscathed – and with £20,000 of funding – after venturing into the ‘Dragons' Lair’.

Mr Bibhas Roy, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, entered a Dragons' Den-style competition where NHS staff could apply for funding for innovative schemes to improve patient care.

Mr Roy’s proposal was for a new way of measuring how well patients are recovering from shoulder surgery.

It asks patients a series of questions before and after surgery – for example, about how easily they can move their shoulder, whether they have any pain and what kinds of things they can and can’t do.

The responses are analysed straight away so that patients and their surgeon can compare their recovery with other people who have had the same surgery. Every patient can then receive follow-up care that is tailored to their individual needs, saving those who are making good recoveries and have no complications from the hassle of unnecessary trips back to hospital.

Although Mr Roy’s shoulder patients will be the first to use the new system – known as PROMs V 2.0 – in time it could be rolled out to other types of surgery “This is a very exciting development,” said Mr Roy. “At the moment, we only get this kind of feedback much later in a patient’s recovery so we can’t use it to support the care of that particular patient. This new system will provide real-time information so we can tailor individual patients’ post-operative care to their needs accordingly.”

The Dragon’s Lair ‘InnovateNoW’ competition was run by TrusTECH on behalf of NHS North West and was open to NHS staff across the North West. The ‘dragons’ were NHS chief executives and directors from the north west.