Our support to industry continued apace during the past year. We have supported over 230 companies. Through our annual impact survey, those companies told us that over the last 12 months our support resulted in 101 jobs created or safeguarded, and economic growth of over £41m (sales, grants and investment).
We have also supported and enabled our NHS colleagues and universities to bring in over £7m in external funding.
Examples of the innovations we've supported include:
PeRSo: a PERsonal Respirator from Southampton to reduce Covid infections amongst frontline NHS staff. The Industry and Innovation team helped navigate the route to regulatory approval. Read the case study here.
GenomeKey: developing technology to rapidly diagnose sepsis, GenomeKey has won major grants and rapidly expanded their team. Please see a full case study at the bottom of this page.
S12 Solutions: a mental health innovation company has received support from different AHSN teams over the past few years, has now grown from two to 20 people, and is in widespread use across the UK.
Glyconics: developing a two-second non-invasive diabetes test, Glyconics has won a significant grant following an advisory panel convened by our team.
Touch Network: a mental health innovation supporting inspirational story-telling has been through our four-day start-up course, received a package of follow-on help, and gone on to win six-figure contracts from the National Lottery to provide services across Southampton.
Lifelight: An innovation which can take accurate blood pressure, pulse and breathing rate readings in 40 seconds, just by a patient looking into any smartphone or tablet device. Completely contactless, with no additional hardware needed.
In addition to direct innovator support, the team supported the Covid-19 response in several ways:
Undertook a rapid national horizon scan to collate a list of market-ready innovations to assist the pandemic response. These innovations have full regulatory approval, may already be in use somewhere in the NHS, and have a short lead-time (i.e. in stock). This was nationally circulated and widely used from March to August, covering over 350 innovations and informing multiple options appraisals.
Provided first-line filtering of innovation offers to the national Test and Trace team and to NHSX, allowing the resource-consuming due-diligence to be focused on those with significant potential.
Provided hands-on support over six months to establish three vaccine trial hubs, enabling rapid recruitment to the clinical trials whilst keeping trial staff and participants away from hospitals.
Series of innovator interviews:
Creators of S12, Lifelight, and the Touch Network talk about how we have helped them develop their innovations in a series of special videos - available on the right-hand side of this page.
GenomeKey
an innovation which can rapidly diagnose sepsis using DNA
CASE STUDY OF INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION TEAM SUPPORT to an innovator
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