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As a department, we are proud to be heavily involved in service development projects, important research as well as attending regular training to ensure the treatment we are offering is effective and up to date.

We hope to keep this page updated with some of our most recent achievements. We also share our good news stories over on our twitter page.

We have won the HSJ Partnership of the Year award 2023 for the work we have been doing around digital self-management with the GetUBetter app. The tool helps musculoskeletal patients self-manage their symptoms, giving them more independence and freeing up time for clinicians.

Huge congratulations are in order for our Musculoskeletal (MSK) Physiotherapy team who have won the NHS HealthTech Partnership of the year 2023 award.

The team won the HSJ award for their involvement in the getUBetter project after being shortlisted in December.

The St George’s MSK Physiotherapy team have been working with tech company getUBetter to deliver a digital self-management tool for their patients since 2017. The tool helps musculoskeletal patients self-manage their symptoms, giving them more independence and freeing up time for clinicians.

The project started with a small pilot for back pain patients, which then grew over the years to be implemented across Wandsworth primary care, before being scaled across the whole of South West London (SWL) and most recently in the Emergency Department at St George’s.

Ben Wanless, Consultant MSK Physiotherapist and clinical lead for the project said: “We are so proud that all of our hard work over several years has been recognised with this award.

“Our main aim has always been to better support people and patients to self-manage their MSK condition, so to know that we have achieved this and that’s recognised at a major award ceremony is truly humbling.”

The judges were impressed by the innovative co-production partnership between NHS SWL Integrated Care System (ICS) and getUBetter. This successful partnership means that self-management is supported across the entire SWL ICS care pathway, and has allowed getUBetter to scale nationally, as it now provides its technology to 30% of ICS’s across England.

Carey McClellan, CEO of getUBetter, said: “We are so excited to have won the NHS HealthTech Partnership of the year 2023 with our long-term collaborators at SWL and St George’s. It’s a true partnership that benefits the health system but most importantly the patients we serve.”

Jayne Thorpe, Deputy Director of Transformation for Long-term conditions and Prevention, SWL ICS, said: “This win is a lovely acknowledgement for a well deserving team and validates the team’s working approach of using innovation, collaboration, and co-production to improve care for SWL long-term conditions patients. So proud of the whole team.”

Well done to all involved – this is an amazing achievement.

Achievements of the year:

  • St. George’s Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy team wins HealthTech Partnership of the Year Award for their work on the getUBetter app.
  • Ben Bowling has completed his Masters Degree in Sports Exercise Medicine at Queen Mary’s University of London (Musculoskeletal Association of Chartered Physiotherapist – MACP)
  • Ben Bowling has been awarded MACP student research award for his Masters dissertation
  • Tim Noblet is on the executive committee for Advanced Practice Physiotherapy Network (APPN) and MACP
  • Tim Noblet has completed a PhD
  • Helen Oakley has co-authored a Rheumatology book
  • Charlotte Walker and Emily Cowles has finished their PGCert
  • Our MSK placement team successfully ran a Virtual international placement for the first time in 2022 (4 countries, 8 students)
  • Ben Wanless, Tim Noblet, Jai Mistry and Mike Dunn have published recently as authors/co-authors
  • Ben Wanless presented work at a digital event
  • James Wills has completed his Masters degree in Advanced Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy from King’s College London
  • Jai Mistry has won a scholarship to do a Masters Research Degree in Spinal pain from University of Birmingham , and has completed the degree. Jai Mistry is now completnig a PhD at Western University in Canada, in the field of Neuropathic pain in low back related leg pain
  • Jennifer Sheehan has won the innovative educator of the year at student placement awards
  • Chris Cleaver has finished his Masters Degree

Previous MSK Physiotherapy Department Achievements:

  • St. George’s Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy Department is the first hospital to pilot the award winning pain rehabilitation programme “ESCAPE pain”, which is an evidence-based and cost effective group rehabilitation programme for people with chronic joint pain.
  • Our colleagues Theresa Sharland and Ben Wanless have been heavily involved with the novel “GetUBetter” app development. This work led to our department winning “Innovative Trust of the Year” and the Health Innovation Network awards in 2019.

  • Jai Mistry, one of our highly specialised physiotherapist’s has recently published a paper on the clinical indicators to identify neuropathic pain in lower back pain, to read more click here.
  • As a department we have had 9 abstracts accepted for PhysioUK 2020. Well done team!
  • Our outpatient team has worked alongside our major trauma inpatient team to implement a direct referral pathway from ward to outpatient rehab – reducing waiting times and improving continuity of care. This work won best poster at Trauma Care Conference 2020. Well done to all involved! (Further information of the pathway is found here.)

  • Summer 2019, our team completed a cycle from London to Brighton and managed to raise £4885 to go toward rehabilitation equipment for our gym.