16 Jan 2020
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10 Feb 2020
SBRI Healthcare awards £1 million to pioneering innovations in cardiovascular disease and integrated care & social care
SBRI Healthcare has awarded £1 million to fund the development of 10 innovations in the fields of cardiovascular disease and the integration of health & social care. The new projects were funded through a nationwide call by SBRI Healthcare in 2019 which attracted over 150 applications.
SBRI Healthcare works with businesses to identify, co-create and develop innovative health tech solutions for the NHS through a series of funding competitions geared around solving specific healthcare challenges.
Cardiovascular disease causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK, while integrating health and social care has been identified as a key goal as part of the NHS long-term plan, to ease pressure on the health system.
The newly-funded projects aim to bring benefits to patients and social care service users through innovations spanning from implants and portable blood test devices to diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease, AI assisted monitoring for elderly people, and personal technology for more independent living to support people with autism.
The projects will run for up to six months and aim to demonstrate whether these innovations are technically feasible, before further funding is sought to develop and evaluate prototypes. The long-term aim is for successful technologies to be adopted for use in the NHS and across social care services where they can provide benefits for patients, the NHS and the overall community.
SBRI Healthcare is an NHS England and NHS Improvement initiative supported by the AHSN Network.
Lesley Soden, Innovation Programme Director – Health Innovation Network, commented: “To achieve the NHS’s ambition to help prevent over 150,000 heart attacks, strokes and dementia cases over the next 10 years we need to embrace advances in products, technology, and artificial intelligence solutions. These cutting-edge projects are leading the way in the field of CVD innovation. It is so exciting as they have the potential to revolutionise patient care for the 7.4 million people living with heart and circulatory diseases in the UK. Alongside the SBRI Healthcare funding we are looking forward to accelerating the use of these proven innovations within NHS’s cardio-vascular services.”
Richard Deed, Associate Director Industry – Health Innovation Manchester, commented: “The UK’s ageing population is one of the biggest challenges facing the health and care system. With many more people living into old age, health and social care needs are increasingly complex and there is an urgent need for technologies that can tackle this complexity and help join up care across primary, secondary and social systems.”
Stuart Monk, Associate Director of Delivery – South West AHSN, added: “These exciting projects will not only identify new ways to improve care, but also the care system itself, so that patients, the NHS and society as a whole can benefit.”
Funding was awarded to the following projects (click to find out more)
The mission of ‘The Tribe Project’ is to directly address care inequality through closing national social care ‘dark patches’ where services are not currently commissioned or failing. Through use of applied technology, we will improve the quality of life for millions of vulnerable people.
Brain in Hand’s unique support system aims to transform the model of care for autistic individuals, helping them to live more independently by providing a digital solution for delivery of personalised care. Enabling support to be more effective and organisations to spread resources further.
Combining home monitoring with predictive analytics to enable early detection and intervention of respiratory diseases.
Produce an enhancement strategy for the B2C Wellwise assisted living solution. Meeting statutory requirements and providing next-generation care and efficiencies. Combining key aspects of Safety, Health and ADL (Activities of Daily Living) whilst looking at early identification based on variations to expected behaviour.
Integration of an outreach hearing test with an AI-enabled BOT to guide patients and clinicians to share the right information with the right people at the right time to ensure early identification and integrated responses to hearing loss and frailty.
Bridgit™ is a support system helping elderly people keep well and independent both within and outside their homes. Using Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and 2-way communication, Bridgit™ provides insights and direction, enabling targeted support and engagement of users, families and social care.
AI enhanced MRI measurement of heart function developed using more than 2m images from 10 diverse sites. The algorithm betters human performance for speed, accuracy and prognostication. Pan-NHS use will change ~20% of major clinical decisions (e.g. ICD insertion).
Ceryx is developing a novel implantable bioelectronics therapeutic device targeting Heart Failure (HF). The technology will arrest, or reverse, HF pathology using a novel technique of modulating heart functions in line with respiration improving efficiency and performance.
Invitron is developing a portable device that will perform rapid, accurate diagnostic tests using just a small finger prick of blood. This device will enable heart failure to be diagnosed directly in GP practices within a few minutes.
Oxford Heartbeat are developing technology that helps clinicians to accurately plan and rehearse minimally invasive stent graft replacements inside blood vessels with a view to making cardiovascular surgeries more efficient and effective.
