Project
Know Your Floors is a not-for-profit enterprise which raises awareness and provide education around pelvic floor health.
Suzanne Vernazza is a pelvic health physiotherapist at Newcastle Hospitals believes there is a ‘hidden pandemic’ of patients with pelvic floor issues.
Watch our video below to find out more about the project. To enable subtitles click the settings wheel on the video and choose ‘subtitles English (United Kingdom)’ from the menu.
Statistics show that:
– One in three women will gave a pelvic floor issue in their life
– One in ten men will have an incontinence issue over the age of 50
Suzanne launched Know your Floors in 2021 to help reduce some of the myths, open up discussion to make pelvic health less ‘taboo’ and engage people in pelvic floor exercises.
Over the last year Suzanne has been doing a pelvic floor ‘squeeze along’ on TikTok with over half a million followers, to encourage her patients to do their exercises, known as ‘Kegels’.
Suzanne doing the ‘squeeze along’ on Tik Tok
How our innovation team helped
Suzanne contacted the region’s Academic Health Science Network who put her in touch with Charlotte Fox our innovation lead in the commercial enterprise team at Newcastle Hospitals.
Charlotte advised and supported Suzanne to apply for a place on the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme for support to develop an app for the squeeze along incorporating the education model.
The team has also helped with some stakeholder mapping, brokering and facilitating conversations with key people who can support the development of the app. They connected Suzanne to digital healthcare companies that provide a range of tools and programmes to support and manage NHS patients with a range of conditions.
Outcome
Suzanne was successful in her application and won a place on the CEP, the largest entrepreneurial workforce development programme of its kind, run by NHS England’s Innovation, Research and Life Sciences group and delivered jointly with Anglia Ruskin University.
She also plans to launch e-learning training for GPs, primary care professionals and midwives to improve post-natal care.
Testimonial
To have a place on the programme is fantastic news for the project and I've enjoyed developing my ideas to help more patients to have good pelvic floor health. I’m grateful for the support I’ve had from Charlotte, her experience and expertise in innovation have been invaluable in nurturing and growing my plans and connecting me to some of the key people who can help develop and grow my idea to make it a reality.
