Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust is 30 - and just look at what it has achieved

Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust is 30 years old - and to celebrate, we’ve been looking back at some of the many projects the charity has funded at Addenbrooke’s and the Rosie hospitals in Cambridge with the £150million it has raised in that time.

Fundraising for the purchase of the first body CT scanner in Cambridge more than 30 years ago marked the official launch of a fundraising body for the hospitals, out of which ACT as an organisation was born.

£7.5m was raised towards the cost of a new extension to the Rosie maternity hospital, opened by the late Queen and and Duke of Edinburgh in 2013. It included a new midwife-led birth centre and an improved neonatal unit.

£1.1m supported research for the Personalised Breast Cancer Programme to assess the feasibility of sequencing the genomes of volunteer patients from the Cambridge Breast Unit at Addenbrooke’s, to ensure patient treatment is personalised and most effective for them. This included helping Prof Jean Abraham to set up the PARTNER trial, pioneering a new treatment combining chemotherapy and a targeted cancer drug before surgery that has led to 100 per cent survival rates for patients with aggressive, inherited breast cancers three years post surgery.

ACT has funded academics not just for research but for clinical research fellowships too. Dr Ed Needham, based at Addenbrooke’s, says he would not have his career as one of around only 10 Clippers specialists in the UK were it not for ACT funding his fellowship before he went on to gain his PhD. Clippers is a rare inflammatory disease of the nervous system that affects a person’s balance and co-ordination and can affect the ability to speak and swallow.

A £1.5m campaign, backed by the Cambridge Independent, helped to buy Addenbrooke's latest surgical robot - which is helping to cut waiting times and allowing patients to recover quicker from surgery and return home sooner. The da Vinci Xi dual console surgical system has allowed surgeons to accomplish new ‘firsts’ for Addenbrooke’s – including Super Surgery Sunday, during which a team of robotic surgeons carried out a record number of gall bladder operations in a single day, as well as April’s first robot-assisted double operation, where a patient underwent two separate operations at the same time.

£1.5m went to refurbish the haematology day unit, turning it into a state-of-the-art facility with new life-saving facilities, allowing the unit to double the number of patients they could see and reduce waiting times.

A £250,000 appeal funded a liver perfusion machine, making Addenbrooke’s the first UK hospital to have one in routine use for transplants. Liver perfusion mimics the body to ensure a liver’s functionality before transplant, allowing surgeons to ‘test drive’ livers for suitability before transplanting them.

Seed funding aided Prof Rebecca Fitzgerald’s capsule sponge - known as a pill on-a-thread, used as a quick and simple test for Barrett’s oesophagus, a condition that can be a precursor to cancer. The test is now being used in the NHS to help diagnose more cases of Barrett’s and to monitor for the condition – with 30,000 tests completed since Covid. The test is now part of a 10-year trial looking to see if it could be rolled out as a national screening programme like breast or bowel cancer.

The UK’s first MRI scanner wrap with nature-themed images was paid for, helping to alleviate patients’ anxiety – allowing them to go through the scanner on the first attempt.

Capital development and ongoing financial support has been provided for Acorn House, the on-site accommodation for families who need to stay close to their sick children. Since the initial grant back in 2006, ACT supporters have funded a total of £302,566 for both Acorn and Chestnut House, a second on-site building accommodating families.

Following a public appeal, ACT purchased one of the first portable CT scanners in the world for the neurosciences department at Addenbrooke’s. On the Neurosciences Critical Care Unit, CT scans are crucial to the care and outcome of patients – and having a portable CT scanner means clinicians can take it bedside to patients instead of having to employ a team of staff to move very sick, ventilated patients to a static scanner, which can take up to an hour. A portable CT scanner allows quick diagnosis of rapidly deteriorating patients, increased efficiency and reduces the risk of infection when moving through the hospital.

£239,982 funded the purchase of the UK’s first cascination machine, the CAS ONE IR system, used to treat liver cancer patients at Addenbrooke’s. The system allows surgeons to see the size and position of the tumour, allowing earlier treatment. It uses a CT-based navigation system for patients requiring a form of treatment known as liver ablation, which uses extreme temperatures to treat tumours. Software guides a needle into place to ensure complete coverage of a tumour, leading to fewer repeat treatments. Since its purchase, 50 per cent of patients undergo liver ablation using the system - a significant increase from the 10 per cent who received it during the trial period.

The dementia ward was transformed with funding for specialist devices known as RITA devices, which are programmed with music and games to trigger old memories as well as larger clocks. A special wall mural of Cambridge in days gone by to follow later this year.

£350,000 funded a ward for family-based care, avoiding having to separate parents and young babies.

A £250,000 refurbishment of the Paediatric Day Unit (PDU) was founded. It houses the regional children’s oncology and haematology outpatient clinics, freeing up more space for the 6,000 children and their families who are treated here.

The outpatients’ X-ray waiting room was transformed with a special woodland-themed vinyl on the walls in honour of a former young patient, Emily Smith, whose family fundraised for the work as a way of thanking staff who cared for their daughter. It provides a calming environment for patients.

Projects delivered by ACT’s linked charity Cambridge Global Health Partnerships have been supported, improving health outcomes locally and globally. Through peer-to-peer teaching and training, a health partnership that is building critical care capability and capacity in Uganda has also developed the skills and knowledge of the Addenbrooke’s critical care staff involved.

A virtual reality headset has been leased to help palliative patients, reducing pain levels by 28.6 per cent and anxiety levels by 40.3 per cent.

66 coin-operated modern, manoeuvrable wheelchairs were funded.

An outdoor terrain area was funded at the new Prosthetics and Orthotics Unit in Great Shelford, allowing patients to practise walking on different surfaces in a more realistic setting rather than having to test out new limbs within hospital corridors or busy, outdoor areas.

£216,000 paid for the Paediatric and Neonatal Decision and Support Retrieval service (PaNDR), transporting the region’s sickest babies and children from hospital to the nearest specialist intensive care unit, across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

Tea and coffee is paid for on every ward within the hospital and an annual staff barbecue is funded.

ACT has worked with corporate partners on hospital projects. This year’s Cambridge Dragon Boat Festival is raising funds to build the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital (CCRH). Cambridge Commodities in Ely holds an annual ball to raise funds to buy every patient in hospital on Christmas Day a present. Illumina has funded emergency health care packs for families of children admitted to hospital in an emergency. And Cheffins has pledged £100,000 to fund a playroom for the new Cambridge Children’s Hospital.