Update on The National Centre for Child Health Technology

Sheffield Children’s is leading an amazing new development based at the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park – the National Centre for Child Health Technology (NCCHT). It will be a place to carry out world-leading research, inspire, innovate and build new technologies to solve the biggest challenges in children’s healthcare.

The Centre will bring together children, healthcare professionals, inventors, businesses, academics and engineers under the same roof. It will have state of the art facilities for manufacturing, digital and device development, and the opportunity to deliver some Sheffield Children’s clinical care. It will also be more than a building, it is an exciting opportunity to be a catalyst for sparking more opportunities for a culture of innovation and use of technology to further improve healthcare across Sheffield Children’s and beyond! 

Back in February 2023 it was announced that the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (£6m) and our Children’s Hospital Charity (£2m) provided the final funding plan for the centre which forms part of the total capital of £22m to start the development. You can read about this announcement on our website.

Since February colleagues across Sheffield Children’s, and partners working on the project, have been busy putting plans in place to put a spade in the ground and get building, so we thought this was a good time to explain what’s happening.

What will the National Centre of Child Health Technology do?

The NCCHT will have a virtual reality and robotics suite, a creative space to develop innovative ways to care for children and young people remotely and the opportunity to test new prototypes.

It will be a space to connect children and young people, families, academics, engineers, industry, creators and healthcare professionals under one roof, to solve the big problems in healthcare and improve the lives of young people through technology. It will create an exciting opportunity to lead the way with ideas about how we can embrace technology to help children and young people manage their health conditions in new ways.

We will also have the opportunity to deliver some of the NHS clinical care from the Centre, details of which are being developed.

What are child health technologies?            

New technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robotics and virtual care are changing our lives. Together, we will use them to change how we care for children.

The Centre will be a place to innovate, design, create, test and put into practice these and other child health technologies.

A place for South Yorkshire…

 Sheffield Children’s vision is for local children and their families to benefit from the latest in improvements in healthcare. As part of the Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park, we will drive employment and develop the skills of our local communities. There will be world-class healthcare facilities onsite, so some patients at Sheffield Children’s will receive their healthcare at the Centre.

And a place for children everywhere…

 The NCCHT will be more than a building. It will bring together a community of innovators across the country and the world, working and collaborating at the Centre and virtually. The technologies we develop will benefit children today and improve their lives in the future, helping to keep them healthy during their early years and throughout their lives – together we can improve the health and healthcare our children and young people.

Funding

The NCCHT has received funding from a combination of the UK Government Levelling up Fund, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority and The Children’s Hospital Charity alongside a contribution from the Trust’s own capital resources. The future of the centre will continue to be funded outside of NHS funds and will be a combination of commercial and research space as well as NHS care provision.

The Children’s Hospital Charity fundraiser is now on their website.

Thank you 

Thank you to the teams who have made this happen so far, we’re very excited to work together to build a better future for children’s healthcare.