Time is of the essence when providing emergency medical support. Metix Medical has developed Coremed, a light, portable monitoring device that rapidly gathers a patient’s vital medical information, enabling first responders to quickly make decisions about treatment and the right place for care.

The Coremed device constantly monitors a person’s medical data and stores it both locally and in a remote monitoring platform in real time. This information can be exported automatically or on demand for further clinical review or record keeping. Metix Medical's platform can keep track of multiple patients simultaneously, ranking them based on severity with its heavily-automated patient scoring engines. 

The company has raised over £ 4 million in grants and funding since inception, which has enabled it to continue developing its triaging technology. It is now looking to gain market entry in North America and establish market clearance for its products throughout Europe. 

Dr James Gough is a former military and humanitarian aid doctor who has worked with the British Army and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 2018, James set up One Shot Immersive to create virtual reality medical and situational awareness training to help save lives. 

This new startup launched its first beta product in Yemen in January 2020. Funded by a Danish foundation, its 360° virtual reality (VR) experience is an interactive mass-casualty triage training tool for doctors and healthcare workers. The VR gives them an immersive experience of a traumatic conflict situation, enabling them to recognise injuries that vary in severity. It also shows how to clinically prioritise and treat them.

The vision for One Shot Immersive is to deliver virtual reality that empowers people to save lives. The company intends to become a leader in supplying virtual reality medical training to conflict zones and the world’s most remote and hard-to-access regions.

Q-Bot Ltd uses robotics, 3D scanning, digital tools and AI to help contractors inspect, maintain and upgrade buildings. Uninsulated floor in a typical suspended timber floor home can be responsible for 20% of heat loss. Q-Bot’s patented small robots are placed under the floorboards, where they spray insulation on the underside of the boards to stop draughts and heat loss through the floor.

The result is a significant reduction in energy use and CO₂ emissions. In 2020 the company’s work was recognised with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation category. Q-Bot now offers a range of solutions that can identify the needs of individual properties, automate repetitive tasks, reach inaccessible areas and track the work done.

Mathew Holloway is Co-Founder and CEO of Q-Bot. He leads the company’s overall strategy, fundraising and team. He says that he benefitted from the SME leaders programme through the practical lessons it gives to solve real business challenges and the opportunities it gave him for personal development.

Q-Bot has a busy few years coming up. In 2019 it received financial backing from several investors, including the French multinational Saint-Gobain. The £3.6 million initiative will enable Q-Bot to extend its operations from the UK into France and the Netherlands. 

The problem 

It is estimated that a third of the food grown worldwide, around 1.3 billion tonnes, is not eaten and goes to waste at a cost approaching £1 trillion. In the UK, the cost of food waste from households totals £9.7 billion, while in the hospitality and food sector businesses alone it has been evaluated at £2.5 billion.

To avoid the negative impacts from food waste including huge greenhouse gas emissions and lack of sufficient landfill spaces, London is aiming to be a zero-waste city by 2026 with no biodegradable or recyclable waste sent to landfill. Scotland has a target to ban food waste to landfill or sewer by January 2021. Overall, the UK’s target date is 2030. With existing solutions, these targets cannot be met.

The solution

Ifeyinwa Kanu is the founder and director of IntelliDigest Ltd, a start-up company from Heriot-Watt University. At IntelliDigest, Ifeyinwa is combining biotech and deep-tech software to develop a user-friendly, odour-free and patented ID Box and IntelliTrade platform that can be used at home, in the work place and within the hospitality sector to convert food waste to climate friendly chemicals.

Using the ID Box can eliminate exposure to long-term health problems such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These can arise from the bioaerosols from microorganisms growing quickly and degrading food waste during collection, handling and composteing. 

The ID Box uses artificial intelligence and embedded sensors to characterise food waste, then optimises the enzyme dosing that breaks it down producing bio-chemicals. The biochemicals are analysed using embedded sensors and the information is then made available on IntelliDigest’s blockchain trading platform, where it can be purchased by registered businesses and converted into biodegradable packaging or 3D printed items.

Ifeyinwa says: “My vision for IntelliDigest is to be the go-to-market solution that enables a more environmentally-friendly and holistic way of dealing with food waste at home, work and hospitality outlets. Our technology will help repurpose inedible food waste by creating high value climate-friendly chemicals, thereby boosting the bio-economy without adverse impact on the environment.”

Marriott Hotels, Radisson Hotels and the InterContinental Hotels Group have signed up for paid trials of IntelliDigest’s ID Box technology and the company is now looking to secure £500,000 investment by the end of 2020 to complete manufacturing and commence commercialisation.

Traction 

2016 –   Created IntelliDigest Ltd
2017  –  Winner of the Institution of Engineering and Technology Innovation Award
2018 –   Established a partnership with Bosch for subcontracted commercial manufacture of ID Box 
2019  –  Joined Telefonica/Wayra AI & Blockchain Accelerator
2019  –  Awarded an Enterprise Fellowship
2019  –   Company signs trial contracts in the UK with Marriott Hotels and Radisson Hotels
2019  –  Accepted on the Novozymes' HelloScience innovation hub
2020  –   Accepted on Mayor of London’s Better Futures programme

The problem

External medical devices that attach and apply pressure to the skin, such as prosthetics, orthotics and respiratory masks, often do not fit properly, leading to pain and injury for the user. An average of nine clinical visits is usually required before a comfortable fit is achieved for a prosthetic limb after amputation. The lack of analytical tools can result in the fitting of these bespoke devices becoming a lengthy and frustrating process.

The solution

Radii Devices aims to improve the fit of external medical devices and increase the quality of life for patients. Dr Joshua Steer formed the company as a spin-out from the University of Southampton’s Bioengineering Sciences Research Group in 2019. It exploits the biomechanical modelling and analysis he has developed to give clinicians more accurate predictions of fit during the prosthetic socket design process.

Imaging techniques, such as laser and MRI scanning are used to capture the shape of the individual’s limb. This enables Radii Devices to track shape change over time, generate computational models to predict pressure at the limb-prosthetic interface, and compare results across the population to forecast the comfort of a particular socket. Healthcare professionals can then view this analysis to support their choice of optimal socket.

The World Health Organization estimates that 30 million people worldwide are in need of prosthetic and orthotic devices. This number is due to rise, driven by an ageing population and increasing incidence of diabetes, which is the leading cause of amputation.

As an engineer, Joshua wants to solve real-world problems. His technology could be applied to any external medical device that applies pressure to the skin such as ankle-foot orthoses, wheelchair seating, and footwear. The company is running clinical pilots of its software in 2020 aiming to achieve full product launch soon after. Radii Devices is simultaneously working on collaborative projects for other medical devices such as respiratory face masks for intensive care, to help manufacturers improve the quality of fit.

Joshua says: “The Fellowship has given Radii Devices the best possible launchpad to translate our research into clinical and commercial use. It has provided us with the skills, expertise and support to refine our business model, raise our first funding round and commence clinical pilot studies.”

Traction

2015 Institute for Mechanical Engineering (iMechE) Vicon Award
2019 Dr Joshua Steer was awarded an Enterprise Fellowship
2019 Radii Devices spun out of the Bioengineering Sciences Research Group at University of Southampton
2019 Secures £100,000 of investment at Future Worlds Dragons’ Den event
2020 Launched at the Consumer Electronics Show
2020 Commences pilot studies of the software with clinicians

Visit their website: www.radiidevices.com

Optical sensors developed by Oxsensis meet the challenge of taking precise measurements in harsh and hostile conditions. For industries that rely on high-accuracy measurements, its sensors capture data for variables such as temperature, pressure and acceleration and deliver it via optical fibres for use in monitoring systems.

With technology based on the micro-machining of super resistant materials such as single-crystal sapphire, Oxsensis optical sensor systems can optimise performance in a range of applications and industries. In aerospace, they can be used in flight systems to manage safe propulsion of aircraft. In oil and gas, they support efficient gas turbine monitoring to help with clean energy production.

Oxsensis is becoming firmly established as a manufacturer of optical sensors that track variables in real-time. As a non-electrical system, it can achieve this at extremely high temperatures (over 1,000°C), with immunity to interference from electromagnetic fields. This allows systematic observation in critical systems, leading to savings in size and cost, while improving safety.

Ian Macafee, CEO, has been an SME Leader since 2018 and has benefited from mentoring and an extended peer network, which help with managing the challenges of an expanding business. Since receiving the award, his team has grown to 32 employees, an increase of four staff. Oxsensis has also secured equity investment and opened a scale up finance round of investment. This will support the company’s vision for well-managed, long-term, sustainable growth.

Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, Adaptix Ltd

A planar (flat) X-ray imaging solution developed by Adaptix Ltd could significantly improve the availability of 3D X-ray diagnosis.

X-ray is the most commonly used imaging technique in healthcare, supporting clinicians in accurately diagnosing disease and trauma. However, most methods involve bulky, expensive equipment, which can result in limited accessibility for many.

Adaptix aims to transform this situation with its lightweight, portable X-ray imaging solutions. The technology is cost-effective, energy efficient and harnesses the strengths of emerging techniques, such as digital tomosynthesis. It produces high quality 3D X-ray imagery and increased diagnostic accuracy.

Making X-ray imaging techniques more mobile will ensure that those who  had poor access before, will benefit from rapid, accurate diagnosis for a range of conditions. These range from cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases to lung cancer and osteoporosis. 

Dr Gil Travis, Co-founder and Chief Science Officer, leads Adaptix work on developing novel X-ray sources for medical imaging. Since becoming an SME Leader in 2017, Dr Travis, and other members of the management team, have benefited from access to specialised training to support the company’s goals to scale the business, raise revenue and secure capital.

Adaptix has raised over £8 million in equity and published over 50 patents. With its first products launching soon, the company is well-positioned to make a groundbreaking impact on medical and dental practice. It has also identified other uses for its 3D imaging technology with industrial, security and veterinary applications. 

CCm Technologies has developed patented technology that converts captured CO₂ from industrial power generators and other waste streams into materials such as fertilisers, soil conditioners and plastics.

In 2019, the company applied this technology to its first full-scale fertiliser plant, which was deployed at a Viridor’s multi-waste site in Somerset the following year. This is capable of annually transforming 6,500 tonnes of anaerobic digestate cake into 13,000 tonnes of high-grade compound fertiliser. The excess heat from the exothermic operation is then used in the pasteurisation process.

CCm Technologies continues to break new ground. It has developed a fibre that absorbs large amounts of CO_2, which can then be incorporated into a wide range of plastics, such as polypropolene, polythene and polyamide.

As CCm’s CEO, Pawel Kisielewski is responsible for all non-technical issues. He has helped oversee rapid growth in the company since he was enrolled into the SME Leaders initiative in 2018.

The company’s innovatory work has been recognised by the Carbon Trust and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which recently allocated £1 million for CCm Technologies and Severn Trent to explore new ways to recycle wastewater in the sewerage process and convert it into a commercial product.

CCm is one of the 16 founder members of the Sustainable Markets Council, a platform created in February 2020 by HRH The Prince of Wales with the support of the World Economic Forum to drive the transformation to sustainable markets – Build Back Better. The company is now aiming to expand internationally, especially in Canada and the US.

Anaemia is defined by a low red blood cell count. It is the world’s second leading cause of disability, with 1.6 billion sufferers globally. Although it has multiple causes, once they are identified anaemia is often curable.

Based on proprietary technology developed at Imperial College, Toby’s start-up company Eva Diagnostics is developing two affordable handheld anaemia diagnostic devices. 

The first one is AnemiPoint, which can be used to identify the presence of anaemia in patients. The other device AnemiStat will identify different types of anaemia. 

This is a market-first development in point-of-care anaemia diagnosis that enables clinicians to provide tailored treatments for patients. Eva Diagnostics plans to focus on the global market and the $1 billion or more spend on anaemia-related costs.

Dr Supti Sarkar leads the Technology and Investments Group at PwC. She is responsible for the commercialisation of new tech ventures across the firm, and works with in-house entrepreneurs to get their products market ready.

Supti was formally a management consultant at PA Consulting, where she worked with international and regional governments to support their trade and investment strategies. She was also part of Mayor Sadiq Khan's 2016 delegation to Chicago and New York as part of her role in supporting high growth companies entering the US market for the first time. Supti holds a first class degree and PhD in engineering from University College London and is mum to an eight-year-old daughter.

Dr Douglas C Anderson OBE FREng FRSE has a 40-year business career covering almost every aspect, at every level, of healthcare technology product design and product commercialisation processes.

Having trained in industrial design engineering (Edinburgh Napier University 1974), Douglas progressed from hands on designer to the management of design in the high-tech arena.

Using his consulting company Crombie Anderson as a base for innovation and incubation, he subsequently spun out three other high-tech startup companies, two of which became publicly traded business operating in medical fields.

Douglas was the prime mover in these businesses by leading both the innovation and commercialisation processes, including raising over £40 million in private and institutional funding prior to floatation. Today he is internationally recognised for his innovation and entrepreneurial experience and is a regular keynote speaker at healthcare and business congresses around the world.

In 1990, his five-year-old son Leif suffered a spontaneous retinal detachment that went undetected until it was too late to treat. Douglas was struck by the limited capability of diagnostic tools available to practitioners to examine the retina and decided to address this issue. He built a dedicated research team, which led to the formation of Optos plc, a business funded by Archangel from the outset.

Optos succeeded in designing and patenting a scanning laser ophthalmoscope: the world's first ophthalmic device that enabled eye care professionals to capture a digital ultra wide-field image of the almost the entire retina in a single scan. The new method of examining the retina, marketed as the optomap® Retinal Exam, is now offered as the preferred standard of care by tens of thousands of eye-care specialists globally. Over 200 million optomap® retinal exams have been conducted worldwide and a number of novel diagnostic techniques added to improve the understanding and treatment of a wider range of conditions that have been historically difficult to manage.

In 2006 Douglas was awarded an OBE for services to healthcare. Douglas was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2013.

David is an investor and CEO with companies based on technology and innovation.  

After a degree in electrical engineering at the Technion and an MBA from INSEAD,  David worked his way to senior management and board level in a wide range of sectors including sustainability, construction, life sciences, manufacturing, mobile telephony, cyber security and software. His broad experience ranges from startups to public companies, from turnaround missions and crisis management to business development and growth.     

David is deeply involved in the UK startup space, as a member of UKBAA, VCs, EIS funds and university angel groups, and is an active mentor with the Royal Academy of Engineering and Imperial College London’s IVMS programme. He also serves as a non-executive on the board of directors of Kerur Holdings (a public company), the board of governors of the Technion, as an advisor with the US accelerator Silicon Catalyst and the board of trustees of Hadassah UK.

He believes that success comes from a culture of excellence, a multidisciplinary approach, and that the boundaries between B2B/B2C and startups/LargeCo are increasingly blurred.

Richard joined sustainability investment focused Earth Capital Group in 2009 and has worked both on the group’s investment in investment managers and direct growth company investments, including most recently the fund’s investments in SoftIron and Propelair. He takes a leading role in promoting technology transfer opportunities across the group’s international offices.

Prior to joining Earth Capital, Richard was an Investment Director with IBIS Asset Management Ltd, a London-based captive advisor to a large Caribbean conglomerate. Richard was earlier a senior manager in the London office of L.E.K. Consulting, a global strategy consultancy. During his five years with LEK he provided due diligence advice, in numerous large cap and mid-market private equity deals, and advised corporate clients on corporate strategy, business unit growth strategy, process redesign and cost reduction programmes.

A chartered engineer, his early career included successful engineering, operations and customer support management roles with Ford Motor Company and Visteon Corporation. Richard holds an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD and MEng and MA (First Class) degrees in engineering from the University of Cambridge. He is a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment, and a Chartered Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Sainsbury Management Fellow.

Dr Andrew Hosty FREng is an international leader with over 15 years of non-executive board experience and 30 years of executive and management experience, spanning private equity, UK Plc and global blue-chip corporates. He is non-executive director of a companies including: RHI-Magnesita, the global leader in the manufacture and supply of refractories; James Cropper Plc, who create some of the world’s most distinctive and technically advanced paper products; and Rights and Issues Investment Trust Plc, a fund that focuses on small cap UK industrials. 

Andrew is Non-Executive Chairman of mOm Incubators ltd, a pre-revenue startup developing low-cost baby incubators for crisis zones. He is also Non-Executive Chairman of Nexeon ltd, a company developing next-generation cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries. From 2016 to 2018 Andrew was the CEO of the Sir Henry Royce Institute, the UK's home of advanced materials research and innovation. He was Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Advanced Materials, and served on the Plc Board as an Executive Director from 2010 to 2016. 

From 2013 to 2016 he served on the board of Consort Medical Plc, a healthcare company focused on developing advanced delivery technologies, formulation and manufacturing solutions for drugs. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, holds a PhD from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sheffield and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2011).

Chris McIntosh joined Methera Global as CEO in 2017. The company’s vision is to enable the delivery of digital applications to rural and underserved communities worldwide via a resilient constellation of Ka band MEO satellites. He previously spent seven years as CEO of ViaSat UK where he was responsible for the inception and growth of ViaSat’s UK satellite capabilities.  Headquartered in the US, ViaSat are renowned as being one of the most disruptive players in the satellite communications and security domain.

Before joining ViaSat Chris was CEO of Stonewood Group, developers of state-of-the-art cyber products and services.  He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the British Army and has worked within the challenging, high threat cyber and communications environment for over 30 years. He holds a BSc in computer science, MSc in design of computer systems and an MBA.  He is a member of the UKspace trade association and the National Security and Resilience Consortium, and is a chartered engineer. 

Roy Williamson has been helping companies see how their new innovations can disrupt markets for over 20 years.

For the past six years has been successfully helping early stage companies identify and define their strengths, enhance their uniqueness and develop their storylines to engage investors. Roy’s background is in engineering and cleantech and since 2013, he’s been supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs across a broad area of technologies and innovative business models.

Roy is an aeronautical engineer and started his career at Alstom, developing algorithms and models to estimate hardware costs of power generation gas turbines based purely on, often novel, thermodynamic cycles. He has assessed innovation ecosystems of the UK, published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. He has also co-authored guides to support technology developers in the UK automotive sector assess technology readiness levels and help those in the biofuels sector to review pathways for second generation biofuels. He’s appraised novel technology solutions for blue-chip clients, developed proof of concepts and carried out due diligence activities to support investor decision making. He is passionate about the UK and knowledge-intensive companies, from software to deeptech.

Roy is Head of Origination at the Department for International Trade with relationships across the department’s teams, government and the UK’s innovation and investment ecosystem.

Professor Mark Arthur Tooley FREng is the immediate Past President of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. He was the Head of the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering and Director of Research and Development at the Royal United Hospitals, Bath until 2017 when he retired from full-time NHS work.  Since then, he has held several part-time roles. He is a specialist scientific advisor for NHS England, a digital clinical advisor for the West of England Academic Health Science network, and a healthcare technology consultant. He is a registered Consultant Clinical Scientist, an honorary professor at the University of Bath, and a visiting professor at the University of the West of England.

Mark completed his BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bath in 1979. He was sponsored by Westinghouse Brake and Signal company for the four years of the course. He then did an MSc and PhD in Medical Physics at the University of London. His MSc thesis was developing a EEG frequency analyser for anaesthesia. For his PhD research, Mark invented (with a cardiologist) an original method for rate-independent diagnosis of cardiac rhythm for implantable devices, which was patented.  He spent the rest of his career in Medical Physics and Bioengineering departments, both in hospitals and academia, working along medical colleagues. He has worked at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London, Bristol University, United Bristol healthcare NHS Trust, and the Royal United Hospital, Bath. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal College of Physicians, the Institute of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, and the Institute of Physics. He is a chartered engineer and chartered scientist. Mark is on the peer-review college of EPSRC, has recently been a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team and the Royal Society Fellowship panel.

Mark has been a long-standing member of the Panel for Biomedical Engineering at the Royal Academy of Engineering (now called the healthcare policy topic group). He was recently a member of the biomedical engineering membership panel, the Policy Committee, and the working group for Systems thinking in healthcare. He has mentored on the enterprise scheme.

Mark’s research interests include innovations in medicine, physics applications in anaesthesia, simulation in medicine, physiological measurement, biological signal processing, measuring the depth of anaesthesia, blood pressure measurement and novel patient monitoring solutions.

Dr Liane Smith FREng founded Intetech Ltd in 1991, winning the Queen’s Award for Innovation in 2012 for its software. She sold the business to Wood Group in 2013 and in 2018 she left to form a new consulting engineering business, Larkton Ltd.

Liane is enthusiastic about the capability of digital technologies to transform businesses, bringing efficiencies, cost reduction, production control and increasing safety. In her last role as Senior Vice President Digital Solutions for Wood, she built the new global service line and defined its strategy roadmap and development plan. Her expertise is in various specialist branches of engineering in the industrial and energy sectors and in software product design and commercialisation, data management, data analysis, and analytics.