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If you have story to share of an innovative or effective way you have put NICE guidance into practice, now is the time to submit it.

There is just a fortnight to go until the deadline for the 2013 NICE Shared Learning Awards. The awards recognise services and organisations that share valuable and welcome lessons learned through developing effective ways of putting NICE guidance into practice.

All organisations that use NICE guidance are encouraged to enter, including NHS trusts, local authorities, charities, and even small businesses.

Over the last few months, a range of organisations and services have submitted entries of creative and effective ways of putting of NICE guidance and standards into practice.

Among them is the example from the Croydon Borough Team in NHS South West London, which used the NICE quality standard on service user experience in adult mental health to help identify gaps in local mental health services.

The team took NICE's quality standard to develop a visual exercise where stakeholders were asked to rate Croydon services from their experience against statements of a high quality service set by the quality standard.

Each statement from the quality standard was listed on a display board at a consultation event, which participants were free to rate across the day.

Results from the exercise were used to develop recommendations for improving the service, and to determine any gaps in services provided in comparison with those set by the quality standard. Around 80 per cent of the participants who evaluated the event ranked it as ‘useful' or ‘very useful'.

Another example comes from NHS Plymouth, which aimed to increase the number of women breastfeeding, and the duration that they breastfeed for, through a breastfeeding peer support project.

The service adopted advice from the NICE Pathway on Maternal and Child Nutrition, to help achieve accreditation from the UNICEF baby friendly initiative, and used NICE guidance to implement a range of measures.

These included setting up an annual programme of audit to identify skills and knowledge gaps for staff and volunteers, a series of network events to improve skills and knowledge, and setting up a social network site to draw volunteers.

Val Moore, Implementation Programme Director at NICE, said: "The awards provide an opportunity for healthcare services, local authorities and other organisations to share examples of innovative and effective uses of our guidance, which others can then learn from.

"If you have used our guidance, we want to hear from you, whether your examples worked really well, or even if they were only successful in part.

"The stories you share could help communicate valuable and welcome lessons to the rest of health and social care community."

The deadline for entries for this year's awards is 31 January 2013, with the shortlist to be contacted in March.

All shortlisted submissions will have a poster produced by NICE about their work, and the opportunity to talk to delegates about their project at the NICE Annual Conference taking place in Birmingham on 14-15 May. The three highest placed submissions will present at the plenary, and the overall winner will be voted for by conference delegates.

Submit your example to the online NICE Shared Learning database for a chance of winning.