This year The MedicAlert Foundation celebrates 40 years as a registered charity in the UK, protecting the lives of people with hidden medical conditions and allergies.

To all our members a heartfelt thank you for your overwhelming support over the years. We couldn’t have done it without you.

We are celebrating our 40th anniversary with a number of special activities for members which will run throughout the year. These include a Design a Band Competition for children and the launch of the MedicAlert Healthcare Professional of the Year Awards.

Announcement:
Winners of our Healthcare Professional Awards

The winners of our Healthcare Professional of the Year Awards have been announced! Dr John Horton, Dr Chris Edwards and Dr James Sneddon have won The MedicAlert Foundation’s inaugural awards for outstanding healthcare professionals.

This year MedicAlert celebrates 40 years as a registered charity in the UK, protecting the lives of people with hidden medical conditions and allergies. We are celebrating our Ruby anniversary with a number of special activities for members, including the ‘Healthcare Professional of the Year Awards’.

Members often tell MedicAlert that the support and advice they have received from healthcare professionals has made a huge difference to their lives, so the charity therefore decided to formally recognise those who have made the greatest impact on their Member’s lives.

Nominations were considered within three categories and we are delighted to announce that GP Dr John Horton won the Community Care Award; Consultant Rheumatologist Dr Chris Edwards the Hospital Care Award and Heart Specialist Dr James Sneddon, the Emergency Care Award. Congratulations to all three doctors!

Judges for the awards were Dr Graham Box, CEO of the National Association for Patient Participation (which assists the establishment of primary care patient participation groups across UK www.napp.org.uk); Janet Grant, a MedicAlert Member and Programme Secretary of Diabetes UK Croydon Group (www.diabetes.org.uk) and Dr George Sikharulidze, Head of Medical Services at MedicAlert.

Announcement:
Winners of our Design a Band Competition

The winners of our Design a Band competition have been named! Siobhan Koefman, 13 and Daisy Hancox, seven, have won The MedicAlert Foundation’s inaugural national competition for children to design a limited edition medical identification Emblem to complement our existing range of ‘Kids Bands’.

Winning girl band design – Siobhan Koefman, 13

Winning boy band design – Daisy Hancox, seven

This year MedicAlert celebrates 40 years as a registered charity in the UK, protecting the lives of people with hidden medical conditions and allergies. We are celebrating our Ruby anniversary with a number of special activities for members, including the ‘Design a Band Competition’ for children.

Over a quarter of our Members are under 16 years of age and the competition highlights the importance of medical identification for children with hidden medical conditions or allergies. The majority of entrants to the competition were between the ages of seven and 10 and 43% of entrants had an allergy, 30% had diabetes and 19% had asthma.

Both the winning designs will be custom-made into limited edition kids velcro band’s by our award-winning jewellers. Runner’s up and highly commended entrants will receive a complementary MedicAlert kid’s band of their choice.

Judging took place on August 28th with following judging panel; Karen Addington - Chief Executive of JDRF, Debra Allock-Tyler - Chief Executive of the Directory of Social Change, Dr Sheila Shribman - National Clinical Director for Children, Department of Health and Mathew Sheehan - MedicAlert Product Development Manager.