The RNOH Charity launches the UK's first ever healthcare crowdfunding platform

Posted by Sam Bowie on 05 September 2016

The RNOH Charity is very proud to announce that it has created the first bespoke NHS Charity crowdfunding website, to fund brilliant new ideas to improve patient care (www.makeitpossible.org.uk).

For the first time ever, the crowdfunding platform enables patients and their families to support and fund ideas that could benefit them; essential during a time of financial challenge for the NHS. The Make It Possible crowdfunding platform gives patients a voice in improving their own care and offers staff the chance for their innovative ideas to become a reality.

To ensure that the projects are clinically viable a panel of advisors (comprising leading clinical and commercial experts) has been appointed, chaired by leading orthopaedic surgeon, Mr Andy Goldberg OBE.

“There is no one better placed to find new ways to improve patient care than healthcare professionals at the frontline,” said Mr Goldberg. “However, until now there has never been a way for their ideas to come to fruition. The Make It Possible platform is going to change that. Indeed crowdfunding has recently taken over venture capital investment as the best way to fund new ideas,” he continued.

The platform’s initial project is helping to expand and refurbish the Spinal Cord Injury Centre (SCIC), the country’s leading centre for patients with a spinal cord injury.

Every eight hours in the UK, someone is paralysed by a spinal cord injury. It can happen in a split second with no warning. Paraplegic patient Marcus Perrineau-Daley, aged 26, is fronting the launch campaign.  

Marcus (pictured below) said: “A year ago I was a full time DJ and in a second my life changed. I spent months at my local hospital praying I would be transferred to Stanmore.”  

He continued: “My time at Stanmore was a cornerstone of my recovery. It taught me how to survive with a new life. I’m less than a year from my injury and I’ve already got a new role teaching kids to box and I have a renewed vision of the things that I want to achieve with my life, but if other patients have to wait just as long to be transferred then it’s simply not on.”

Dr Angela Gall, Consultant in Rehabilitation, who is heading the Spinal Cord Injury Centre, said, “We treat over 2,000 patients a year from across the country and provide specialist services that local hospitals and A&E departments cannot. The current facility is not big enough to meet demands and patients have to be turned away. If the campaign to raise £400,000 is successful the SCIC will be able to treat more patients per year and for them to start rebuilding their lives.”

For more information please watch our campaign video.