ACT was born out of two existing charities dating back to the 1990s.
In 1995, gifts and legacies which had been donated to Addenbrooke’s Hospital over the years were registered with the Charity Commission and managed by the hospital trust as The Addenbrooke’s Charities. Two years later, a new charity called The Fund for Addenbrooke’s was established to raise funds to support the hospital. In 2005, independent trustees were appointed for ACT with assets from both The Addenbrooke’s Charities and The Fund for Addenbrooke’s transferring to the new trustees, thereby establish ACT as a charity.
Here are just some of the many projects supporters of ACT have funded over the last 30 years…
- Fundraising for the purchase of the first Whole Body CT scanner in Cambridge over 30 years ago marked the official launch of a fundraising body for the hospitals, out of which ACT as an organisation was born.
- £7.5 million towards the cost of a new extension to the Rosie maternity hospital, which was opened by the late Queen and and Duke of Edinburgh in 2013 and included a new midwife-led Birth Centre and an improved Neonatal Unit that includes better privacy for families and a major treatment room for babies that means they can undergo emergency procedures within the unit itself.
- £1.1 million in funding for Breast Cancer to support 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. Part of the funding included paying Professor Abraham’s (above) salary for two years while she worked on multiple breast cancer projects – which supported her during the development and setting up of the PARTNER TRIAL, pioneering a new treatment combining chemotherapy and a targeted cancer drug before surgery, which has led to 100% survival rates for patients with aggressive, inherited breast cancers three years post-surgery.
- Funding academics not just for research but for clinical research fellowships too. Dr Ed Needham, pictured right, 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 – and we have a CLIPPERs patient as one of our fundraisers.
- A £1.5 million campaign, backed by the Cambridge Independent newspaper, 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 – namely Super Surgery Sunday where 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.
- A £1.5m refurb of 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 for a liver perfusion machine, shown above – making Addenbrooke’s the first hospital in the UK 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 for Professor 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 helping to alleviate patients’ anxiety – allowing them to go through the scanner on the first attempt, saving patients’ lives and thousands of pounds for the NHS.
- Capital development and ongoing financial support of Acorn House, 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 to fund the purchase of the UK’s first Cascination Machine, shown above, the CAS-ONE IR system used to treat liver cancer patients at Addenbrooke’s. Designed to treat tumours more precisely, the system allows surgeons to see the size and position of the tumour within the liver, allowing for earlier treatment, thereby helping to prevent deaths. 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 allows the machine to guide a needle into place and reposition where necessary to ensure complete coverage of a tumour, leading to fewer repeat treatments. Since its purchase, 50% of patients undergo liver ablation using the system – a significant increase from the 10% who received it during the trial period.
- Transformation of the dementia ward with funding for specialist devices known as RITA devices, see above, which are programmed with music and games to trigger old memories as well as larger clocks – with a special wall mural of Cambridge in days gone by to follow later this year.
- £350,000 to provide a ward for family-based care, avoiding having to separate parents and young babies.
- A £250K refurb of the Paediatric Day Unit (PDU), which 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.
- A multi-thousand pound transformation of the Outpatients X-ray waiting room with the walls wrapped in special woodland-themed vinyl 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 and to provide a calming environment for patients. Images shown above.
- Support towards projects delivered by our linked charity, Cambridge Global Health Partnerships, that are improving health outcomes both 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.
- The lease of a virtual reality headset that is improving lives of palliative patients – reducing pain levels by 28.6% and anxiety levels by 40.3%
- Funding for a multi-thousand pound outdoor terrain area at the new Prosthetics and Orthotics Unit in Great Shelford, above, allowing patients to practise walking on different surfaces in a more realistic setting rather than having to test out new limbs within hospital corridors and in busy, outdoor areas.
- The purchase of 66 coin-operated modern, manoeuvrable wheelchairs for patients.
- £216,000 to fund the Paediatric and Neonatal Decision and Support Retrieval service (PaNDR), shown above, transporting the region’s sickest babies and children from hospital to the nearest specialist intensive care unit, across Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
- Staff wellbeing – providing tea and coffee for every ward within the hospital and funding an annual staff BBQ to thank hardworking NHS staff.
- Working with corporate partners to raise money for hospital projects – for instance, this year’s Cambridge Dragon Boat Festival is raising funds to build the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital (CCRH), above; Cambridge Commodities in Ely hold an annual ball to raise funds to buy every patient in hospital on Christmas Day a present; and Illumina have funded emergency health care packs for families of children admitted to hospital in an emergency. Cheffins Property has pledged £100,000 to fund a playroom for the new Cambridge Children’s Hospital (CCH), see image below.
- Click here to help ACT continue in its mission to fund ground-breaking research and state-of-the-art equipment
- Click here to read more of ACT’s story.
