About us

The Birmingham Hand Centre was established at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust in 2003 and rapidly expanded to become the largest hand trauma centre in the UK with 13 hand surgery consultants supported by an expert team of therapists and hand co-ordinators. 

UHB is a UK major trauma centre and home to the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine providing first class treatment for injured UK military personnel from operations around the world. The complex nature of injuries treated led to the need to establish a national centre for the management of complex peripheral nerve injuries. The centre provides a tertiary referral service for the West Midlands and beyond. There are now more than 500 new hand trauma cases per month and an additional 80 new nerve referrals which are managed by a team of 4 specialist peripheral nerve surgeons. There are a highly regarded hand surgery and peripheral nerve fellowship programmes and opportunities for research fellowships for all healthcare professionals. 

The HaPPeN research network was conceived by Dominic Power and Mark Foster to develop a research capability within Hand Surgery, Plastic Surgery and Peripheral Nerve Surgery at UHB, enabling high quality outcomes reporting using bespoke data capture IT systems  integrated with normal clinical care pathways. 

The programme of research has expanded to include commercially funded trials, multi-centre trials in the UK and translational capabilities with links to the biomedical device industry and biotechnology companies. Evaluation of devices within the NHS can be facilitated through the SRMRC, the NHS HTC and MD-TEC which are co-located with the HaPPeN team in the Institute of Translational Medicine in Birmingham.

The HaPPeN team in Birmingham has three