Six Scottish SMEs selected to collaborate with NHS Scotland to drive patient care innovation
A new collaborative approach to encouraging business innovation in Scotland has resulted in six Scottish SMEs successfully winning seven new contracts with NHS Scotland to help drive treatment and patient innovation in dermatology, diabetes and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
Scottish companies have secured over 50% of the research and development funding awarded to UK companies - a total of £345,000 - as part of the recent open innovation competitions. Further competitive funding will be available for successful companies that move to the next phases of the dermatology and IBD competitions.
These competitions are designed to open up traditional procurement processes to look for new solutions from a wide range of businesses that can help drive new revenue streams, and at the same time address big service challenges faced by the NHS and public sector organisations.
This new open innovation approach will deliver £1.35 million of collaborative funding from Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government’s innovation and healthcare teams to support companies participating in these competitions. The competitions are run by NHS Scotland, in conjunction with Innovate UK as part of its Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) mechanism to fund UK business innovation.
The companies that have secured funding are:
- AxSys Technology in Glasgow (diabetes)
- Cohesion Medical Ltd in Glasgow (dermatology and IBD)
- Digital Treetop Ltd in Perth (IBD)
- Epipole Ltd in Rosyth (dermatology)
- OpenBrolly Health in Elgin (IBD)
- Storm ID in Edinburgh (dermatology)
Open innovation is an established approach used globally to encourage collaboration to develop solutions to defined challenges. Companies respond with their ideas to defined public sector citizen or societal challenges and, if successful, are fully funded to progress their ideas through feasibility, prototype and/or demonstrator stages.
As the businesses retain full intellectual property, they are free to develop and exploit their product or service further by offering it to other customers and taking it to other markets, making this an ideal way to encourage smaller businesses to innovate more.
Jim Watson, Director of Innovation and Enterprise Services at Scottish Enterprise, said:
“Using open innovation means we can help with two of Scotland’s business and healthcare challenges – get more businesses innovating and find new creative solutions to patient care. We’re making excellent progress in encouraging more Scottish SMEs to embrace innovation to open up new global revenue stream opportunities for them.
“It’s fantastic to see Scottish companies securing more than half of the NHS Scotland R&D funding, but we’re keen to get even more Scottish SMEs involved in other open innovation competitions.
“We currently have 10 live competitions from City of Edinburgh Council, Carbon Trust and Stena Line on our website, all looking for innovative ideas to solve challenges. I’d encourage businesses to visit the website, read about the challenges and respond. Open innovation is a powerful route for SMEs to collaborate with large organisations and receive funding to develop their ideas.”
Paul Wheelhouse, Scottish Government Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy, said: “Scotland has recently moved into the top quartile of countries in the European Union, as regards the proportion of innovation active businesses. However, we are committed to doing even more to boost the level of investment in innovation, including providing £400,000 of financial support to this SBRI project, to champion health innovation which is an important driver of sustainable economic growth. I offer my congratulations to these companies which have demonstrated their ability to develop and commercialise new ideas in the health sector, as, in doing so, they are helping patients and the NHS alike.”
Scottish Enterprise’s Open Innovation page can be viewed at: https://www.scottish-enterprise.com/open-innovation
NOTES TO EDITORS
Company quotes
Dr Pradeep Ramayya, CEO at AxSys Technology Ltd, said:
“The SBRI project is a great step forward in supporting young adults with Diabetes Type 1 and we are delighted to be selected to participate in its final phase. Our aim is to continue to develop our innovative technology to address the very real challenges faced by individuals with long term conditions. Our success in being selected for the final phase of the SBRI Diabetes project follows hot on the heels of our other recent contract wins in the UK and abroad. All of these wins demonstrate that our Excelicare platform and the integrated myCarepod health app is increasingly being recognised as an ideal patient-centric solution for a wide and diverse range of clinical settings.”
Euan Cameron, CEO & Founder, Cohesion Medical Ltd, said:
“Cohesion is delighted to have been a successful award winner for the SBRI Dermatology and the SBRI IBD competitions. As a young Scottish SME specialising in Connected Digital Health solutions, we are excited about the emerging opportunities of developing our technology to optimise clinical workflow and enhance patient experience in these specialisms. The value of the SBRI is in facilitating a level of user engagement with NHS Scotland which would have been difficult to access otherwise. Creating commercial opportunities for Cohesion to sustain high-skilled employment for developing technology solutions for global healthcare markets is another major benefit. We look forward to progressing solutions for both dermatology and IBD over the coming months and participating in further SBRI competitions.”
Dr Craig Robertson, CEO at Epipole Ltd, said:
“We’re delighted that Epipole Ltd has been awarded phase 1 feasibility funding in the NHS Scotland's Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) dermatology competition. Our proposal, which utilises our in-house image processing and algorithm development skills, will benefit from the close collaboration during development we will receive working with NHS specialists. This funding will allow us to continue to develop our novel Class 1 medical imaging device proposal through our ISO13485 and EN62304 processes in support of NHS (Scotland) dermatology services.”
Paul McGinness, Director at Storm ID, said:
“We are delighted to be involved in the Dermatology SBRI programme. The project has great buy-in from senior NHS clinicians and it fits well with our focus on developing new, digitally enabled services for healthcare. It also represents a great opportunity to leverage our growing machine learning capability into the design of a new service.”
Background on competitions
Dermatology competition
Estimates indicate over 4000 deaths each year in Scotland are due to a related skin disease, while other conditions such as eczema and psoriasis often have long term negative impact on an individual’s quality of life.
This places increasing demand on NHS Scotland healthcare services, resulting in over 283,000 dermatology outpatient appointments needed every year, with 41% of these being first time appointments.
The £450,000 dermatology competition aims to find ways to have more diagnosis and ongoing management of skin conditions away from the conventional clinic setting, while still providing adequate consultation time for patients that require it.
Contracts have been awarded to three Scottish SMEs with another two contracts going to SMEs in Wales and England, GP Commissioning Solutions Ltd and Cadscan Ltd respectively. The companies will carry out feasibility studies for their ideas, with successful companies selected to progress to the final stage of contract. The Scottish SME innovations include:
- a system to take diagnostically useful images by Epipole Ltd
- a digital health platform for patients to securely share data that uses a mobile app from Storm ID
- a cloud-based shared care environment for patients and healthcare staff by Cohesion Medical Ltd
Diabetes competition
Type 1 diabetes is a condition which affects around 30,000 people across Scotland and requires them to manage their health in a number of areas, including insulin control, carbohydrate counting and foot care. Following diagnosis they are offered courses through the NHS to learn how to manage their condition, but some people find them difficult to attend and may forget some of the information they’re given.
To supplement these existing education programmes, NHS Scotland designed an open innovation competition to find a new mobile health product, which could be an app, a new interface or a new device, with up to £500,000 to award to companies with innovation solutions.
The first phase of the competition, which completed at the end of October 2016, awarded contacts to five UK companies, including two Scottish companies - AxSys Technology in Paisley and UHI Research and Enterprise Ltd in Inverness. The shortlisted companies were given six months to develop a detailed feasibility study, and were then reduced to a shortlist of two that will develop a prototype over the next year.
These two companies have now been selected to go through to the final phase of the competition and are AxSys Technology of Paisley and Bristol-based social enterprise, LeLan.
AxSys Technology is developing a mobile app to support young adults with Type 1 diabetes by providing useful and timely notifications, educational information and assessments to help them better manage their blood glucose levels through review and learning from their own data. The app is tailored and deeply personalised for each user, making it significantly different to other apps available.
IBD Competition
IBD, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is a chronic condition with patients requiring medical input throughout their life. Traditionally, this means that they will be provided with routine appointments to a gastroenterology outpatient clinic at their local hospital on a regular basis.
IBD is a relapsing and remitting condition so patients may not display any symptoms or require any specific assistance at the time of their routine outpatient appointment. This is not a productive use of time for either patients or NHS staff. In contrast, there are also times when people with IBD may require rapid access to specialist services to prevent further deterioration of their condition.
The £400,000 IBD competition is designed help address these challenges by develop new and innovative technologies to help patients monitor and manage their condition themselves, enabling them to access medical resources when they actually require it and have a higher quality of life.
Three Scottish SMEs have been selected for funding through the competition’s first phase: OpenBrolly Health in Elgin, Cohesion Medical Ltd in Glasgow and Digital Treetop Ltd in Perth. A further two companies in Dynamic Health Systems Services Ltd from Bradford and Oviva UK Limited from London have also been selected for funding.
These companies will collaborate closely with patient groups, clinicians, GPs, dieticians and other members of the gastro community to develop their innovative ideas and technologies.
For more information on the NHS Scotland SBRI open innovation competitions, please visit:
IBD https://newwavehealth.scot/OurChallenges/Public_Challenges/IBD/Pages/default.aspx