31 Oct 2023
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20 Nov 2023
Greater Manchester diagnostics innovation programme secures over £14m investment
A health innovation programme to advance the use of novel diagnostics across Greater Manchester has been boosted by over £6m investment from life sciences, digital and creative industry partners, as well as £7.7m from Innovate UK, the UK’s national innovation agency.
Over the next two years, the health innovation accelerator will focus on tackling some of the most challenging disease areas through early diagnosis using novel approaches and holistic treatment aligned to people’s specific needs. It is hoped this will help to save more lives and improve health outcomes for people at high risk or living in the most disadvantaged communities.
The £14m programme includes a range of projects in diagnosing liver disease, heart failure, lung cancer, chest pain and cardiometabolic conditions, as well as the ground-breaking DEVOTE programme, to deliver bedside genomic tests to prevent a second stroke in a patient who has experienced a stroke; rapid point of care devices to detect genetic changes; and the development of a ‘pharmacogenetic passport’ to improve the effectiveness and safety of medicines for patients.
The health innovation accelerator is delivered through a partnership between Health Innovation Manchester, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, and the University of Manchester.
Further partnerships with global organisations and SMEs in life sciences, digital and creative industries have also been secured to provide additional expertise in technology and analytics, diagnostics and genomics, user research and marketing. The novel approach to industry partnerships testament to the strength of the city-region’s existing collaborations with life sciences and digital businesses.
The industry partners are as follows:
- Diagnostic delivery partners include Sollis; Graphnet Health; Gendius; Jiva AI; Mind Field Advertising; By Gamers for Gamers; BCN Group.
- The genomics project key partners are APIS Assay Technologies; EMQN CIC; Genedrive; Epinal; Chromition; and NW Genomic Medicine Alliance Service.
- The diagnostics co-investment partners are AstraZeneca; Novartis; Boehringer-Ingelheim; MSD; Roche Diagnostics; MyCardium AI; Siemens; and Dedalus.
Funding from Innovate UK has been provided through Greater Manchester’s Innovation Accelerator programme. Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, the pilot Innovation Accelerator programme is investing £100m in 26 transformative R&D projects to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation clusters – Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands.
Laura Rooney, Director of Strategy at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “The health innovation accelerator programme will develop a step-change in the development and deployment of novel diagnostics in GM, targeted towards the needs of local people. It will add value to academic research and sector strengths and leverage existing data assets to transform patient care, unlock new market opportunities for businesses, and strengthen GM’s position as a world-leading centre for health innovation.”
Diagnostic Delivery Partners (please click each tab to read more):
Launched in December 2020, Mind fFeld are an advertising agency specialising in market research, creative, digital, media planning & buying; solving problems through informed intelligence and execution.
Mind Field will be using their communication, research and advertising expertise to assist key projects with public and patient co-production, identifying and engaging underserved communities and highlighting inequalities, understanding behavioural change and ensuring true engagement with innovative diagnostic development.
By Gamers, For Gamers are a team of experienced and passionate individuals dedicated to bringing audiences the best in PC tech, gaming and Esports through media publishing, empowering readers with the information to make informed decisions.
By Gamers, For Gamers will be working closely with healthcare staff, patients and the public to bring innovative and novel methods of engagement into healthcare. Using key lessons learnt from the field of gaming, they will explore how to apply key strategies from the gaming arena into health diagnostics to broaden the reach of communication, particularly with under-engaged communities within the region.
Sollis are population health management specialists, combining expertise and advanced health analytics to reveal insights from complex data, enabling better decisions to be made for patients and populations.
Sollis will be utilising their expertise to contribute to a common data platform across selected GM Innovation Accelerator key projects, using data already established and gained from the key projects to assist population health decisions concerning diagnostics.
Graphnet’s market leading shared care record software, CareCentric, is enabling local authorities, care services, Trusts, and other organisations within Integrated Care Systems (ICS) to share and compare records. Coupled with powerful population health tools, ICSs are able to use this data, gathered from across health and care settings, to see exactly where the gaps are in their regions, along with empowering patients by allowing them to view their own records.
Graphnet’s expertise within the GM Care Record will be instrumental in further developing how we collect and record diagnostic information through innovative new products and pathways, contributing to the advancement of a SEC data platform that can highlight the data from each key project and how it is implemented into real world services.
Jiva.ai is a no-code multimodal AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform to rapidly prototype AI models, including imaging, video, text, audio and structured data. The Jiva platform connects multiple data concepts and hierarchies together to create meaningful insights through AI systems that tell you why they behave a certain way as well as what the predictions are.
Jiva AI will be contributing to a common data platform across selected GM Innovation Accelerator key projects, using data already established and understanding where additional forms of media can be incorporated into records to further understand patient health and outcome predictions.
BCN is a Digital Transformation Specialist, creating, developing and transforming organisational technology to enhance success, through one provider. This includes cyber security, business applications and development, managed services and data and analytics.
BCN will be supporting the creation of additional capacity within the common data platform across key GM Innovation Accelerator projects; supporting key partners and healthcare providers as digital transformation continues to advance and change healthcare diagnostics.
Gendius are a health data and insights business that develops AI-powered certified medical devices to stratify patients by risk of complications. Their solutions identify which patients are likely to benefit from clinical actions, enabling smarter strategies that improve patient outcomes. Gendius help to get rid of the guesswork, empowering clinicians and patients with data insights.
Gendius have developed the Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Screening Prioritizer which stratifies patients according to their risk of undiagnosed CKD. Within the Accelerator, this unique solution will be utilised to identify high-risk patients and accelerate their diagnosis pathway.
Genomics Key Partners (please click each image to read more):
APIS Assays Technology Ltd
EMQN CIC
Genedrive
