Durham Smart County - Tackling the Healthcare Causes and Consequences of Social Isolation. NEPO project reference - DN228647

Durham County Council's Corporate Management Team has signed off an innovative approach to stimulating high value economic activity in County Durham. This approach explicitly links economic development activity to delivering transformative public health outcomes: using "problems" as assets, as opportunities for innovative product and service development and catalysing the establishment of a commercial cluster in healthcare.

Business Durham, as the project lead for the Smart County concept, undertook a wide-ranging consultation and, in collaboration with key partners and stakeholders, an overarching theme for this commercial cluster was selected which would enable leadership in a particular niche: Durham as a living lab for organisations to begin to tackle the health causes and consequences of social isolation, eventually preventing people becoming patients by delivering a better preventative healthcare model.