Co-production in Action. Number Two. Case Study 3: The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Child Prosthetics Research Project

Following the announcement in March 2016 of the government’s investment of £1.5 million in child prosthetics, D4D were given the role of leading the NIHR Child Prosthetics Research Project (also known as ‘Starworks’). The project aimed to ‘incentivize the development of new breakthrough innovative prosthetic products for the NHS.’ By increasing the focus on research, the project aimed to accelerate the translation of new inventions and developments in child prosthetics into everyday use. A core emphasis of the project was to encourage an active lifestyle for children with prosthetics, with half of the £1.5 million being dedicated to the provision of activity limbs (i.e. running ‘blades’ or ‘swim limbs’) for children in England. As such, a key focus of the research was on developing activity limbs (rather than focus solely on one element such as ‘running blades’ as it could not be assumed that all children would require a particular prosthesis). The approach taken was to establish a Child Prosthetics Research Collaboration, which brought together children and their families with key opinion leaders from healthcare, academia and industry. The project began with a ‘needs assessment,’ developing an understanding of current challenges within the system based on the views of these four key stakeholder groups. Data were collected using methods suited to each stakeholder group. For example, clinicians were engaged through online surveys (a quick task which could fit into their busy workloads) whilst young children were engaged through creative workshops and paper-based questionnaires that focussed on drawing and self-expression