Elevate: North Cheshire and MerseyFriday 27 November 2026A brand-new trust is writing its clinical and digital strategies right now, and it wants to see the market before it commits. The day is built to put the people who choose technology in the same room as the people who have to live with it.
A new trust is asking its workforce what technology should do next - and writing the answers straight into the strategies it is drafting now. Be in the room when they are given.
The trust has one ask: every conversation should connect to the three shifts in the NHS 10 Year Health Plan. Lead with the challenge facing a service or a patient, not with your technology.
Four virtual wards and two urgent community response teams are already running, taking referrals from 111 and from ambulance conveyances. The trust wants care, and the tools that support it, to work properly in a patient's home and neighbourhood.
The shift where the trust sees the biggest gap in what it does today. It wants wearables, monitoring and patient-facing technology that catch problems earlier - and clinicians asking for them rather than being handed them.
Consolidating two organisations' systems, teams and infrastructure into one, and removing the paper and manual steps that survived the merger.
Drawn from the trust's own briefing. If your solution sits in one of these, you are already relevant before you arrive. Core EPR replacement is not in scope - a joint procurement is live - so anything here has to work alongside an existing acute EPR and TPP SystmOne in the community. Two suppliers per category, maximum. The full A-Z of all 98 categories is further down this page.
Why hold it in the hospital? The Countess of Chester on reaching the clinical and operational staff who never make it to a conference.
Four virtual wards and two urgent community response teams already run, taking referrals from 111 and from ambulance conveyances. The trust wants them genuinely joined up to acute services, and community and district nursing teams equipped with the information and tools they need at the patient's side.
The gap the trust most wants to close. It does the basics in long-term conditions, but very little with wearables or patient-side devices - and it wants monitoring its own clinicians actively ask for rather than technology handed to them.
Near-home and bedside diagnostics a community nurse or advanced practitioner can take and act on immediately - simple bloods, reasonable imaging - without waiting on a system-level pathway. Plus imaging and pathology AI, building on chest x-ray reading already in use.
Ambient voice is live at scale, well beyond outpatient consultations, and is heading to district nursing teams. Microsoft Copilot is deployed at scale. The trust wants to see where else AI and automation remove documentation and admin, clinical and corporate alike, and turn that platform into measurable productivity.
The patient engagement portal is well adopted and community services are becoming a first-of-type integration into the NHS App. Next: technology that helps patients navigate their own care - prevention, long-term conditions, and preparing for and recovering from planned treatment.
Shared care record integration so acute, community and neighbourhood teams see the same picture, alongside integration engines, document management and paper-light working. Anything that cannot integrate cleanly is of no use here.
The trust's strategy turns on making an ageing estate deliver efficient care. Real-time location and asset tracking - tracking beds and wheelchairs is a live, unsolved problem - plus silent ward and modern nurse call, signage and wayfinding, infection prevention, and net zero.
The trust has explicitly asked for suppliers who will be disruptive in its thinking and catalyse ideas it has not had yet - not only those who tick a category.
Your solution is matched to the trust's stated priorities. No cold pitching - you are there because you are relevant.
Executives, clinicians, ward and community teams, corporate services, estates and digital - in a single day, at one site.
Discussions that feed directly into the clinical and digital strategies the trust is drafting. Real engagement, not transactional demos.
Leave with qualified contacts, documented interest, and a clear path to next steps inside the organisation.
Elevate showcases have already run at University Hospitals of Derby and Burton, Bristol NHS Group and the Countess of Chester - each one feeding frontline insight straight into a host trust's strategy.
Three to four months of engagement, in a single day
Normally it would take us three to four months to get the same level of engagement that we've achieved in one day.
22 demos booked out of one day
We've actually lined up 22 demos with wider departments.
The people digital events never reach
The types of events that we normally go to tend to be IT driven, so you get a lot of people from digital and IT.
Board and frontline, in the same room
Not only the people at the top who understand what the strategy is, but also the shop floor people, the people on the coalface.
The eight priorities above are where North Cheshire and Mersey is putting its emphasis. This is the complete list it registered with Highland. You do not have to match a headline priority to be relevant - if you are anywhere in this index, it is worth applying.
Places are limited to two suppliers per solution category, so the day stays genuinely useful for staff and worthwhile for you.
Core package
Everything you need for a full day inside the trust.
Deliver a dedicated presentation or case study in the 80-seat lecture theatre at the centre of the venue.
Staff from across a trust of around 6,500 people - executives, clinicians, nursing and ward teams, community and district nursing, operational and corporate services, estates, and digital and IT. The Chief Executive opens the day, and the trust has asked for strong executive involvement throughout it. Elevate showcases typically bring several hundred staff through across a single day.
No. The trust has been explicit that this is an engagement exercise, not a procurement event, and it needs no procurement governance or sign-off. The purpose is to let staff at every level see what is possible, ask questions, and tell the trust where technology would make a genuine difference - and for that insight to shape the clinical and digital strategies being drafted now.
No. The trust is working through a joint EPR procurement with a neighbouring trust, so core EPR suppliers are not being invited to this event. What it does want to see is technology that complements the EPR and integrates cleanly with what is in place today - an acute EPR on one side and TPP SystmOne in community services on the other. Integration capability is a real selection criterion here, not a box to tick.
Some are. Imaging, pathology and telehealth are delivered through Cheshire and Merseyside regional arrangements with their own systems and roadmaps, and ambient voice technology sits on an integrated care board framework. That does not rule those categories out - the trust has said it would welcome ideas in them - but it is not always the sole decision-maker, and it is worth knowing that before you apply.
Highland works with the trust to identify its priorities and the parts of the health tech market it most wants to see, then invites suppliers against them. The aim is no more than two suppliers per solution category, so staff get a genuine comparison rather than a crowded field. The trust has also specifically asked for suppliers who will be disruptive in its thinking.
Thelwall House, the postgraduate education centre on the Warrington Hospital site. The trust chose its main acute site deliberately, to get the highest possible staff throughput across the day. The whole ground floor is given over to the showcase - an 80-seat lecture theatre, the library, seminar and common rooms, the canteen, and the lobby and corridors that connect them.
Places are limited to two suppliers per solution category. Request your place to check availability in your category.
