A hospital patient raised thousands of pounds to help fund an innovative project.

Helen Hill, a patient of specialist hospital St. Mark’s in Harrow, has raised more than £13,000 since May 2014 which will go towards a special tissue engineering project.

Helen Hill has intestinal failure as a result of gastroparesis and visceral myopathy, and has to be fed artificially through a jejenostomy tube.

With the support of her friends, family and the community, she has run more than 15 events since May last year with around 130 donations totalling more than £13,500 including Gift Aid.

This has been raised from events including a skydive, where six brave supporters took part, to packing bags in supermarkets with children and adults from the community.

More recent events include a Christmas raffle, which raised around £2,500 and had the support of many businesses, a dress down day, and a dance night in January which raised £700.

The innovative project that Helen is fundraising for would see the creation of an artificial bowel that is created from tissue engineering.

In recent years, the team has managed to strip out the cells in a pig bowel and develop a unique scaffold which can be implanted with new cells to form another organ.

A spokesman for the hospital said: “Support from Helen is deeply appreciated by St. Mark’s Hospital Foundation in the fight for a future free from the fear of bowel disease.

“As we mark 180 years since the Hospital’s founding as the world’s first specialist bowel disease Hospital, the efforts made by patents such as Helen will enable us to carry on helping millions of patients long in to the future.”

You can support Helen by visiting https://www.justgiving.com/Helen-Hill22/