The AHSN Network has supported many innovators to help advance our health and care system. Find out more about successful innovations supported by the NHS.
Usually, training in laparoscopic surgery is based on using high cost surgical simulation devices which are hard for medical staff to access, limiting opportunities for learning. Inovus Medical is producing a suite of medical training devices at a fraction of the cost of established models – leading to an increase in training opportunities and safer surgery.
Healthcare Communications is a Macclesfieldbased SME that has a range of software solutions for the management of outpatient appointments, including digital outpatient letters, a patient portal and a health messaging service.
The incidence of melanoma is increasing faster than any other form of cancer, and it is responsible for the majority of skin cancer deaths. Patients in whom melanoma is diagnosed at stage I have more than a 95% chance of survival compared with 8-25% with a stage IV diagnosis, highlighting the importance of early and accurate diagnosis. Skin Analytics have crafted a series of AI algorithms that can take a dermascopic image of a skin lesion and help identify skin cancer.
LiveSmart is aimed at companies who are keen to improve the health and wellbeing of their workforce. They provide pathology-based health assessments, digital health data tracking, reporting and behaviour change programmes, alongside 1:1 healthcoaching services led by their medical team to help build a happier, healthier workforce.
CareHound is a free mobile app for people organising elderly care, designed by Consentricare, a healthtech start-up launched by two friends, after experiencing difficulties accessing information and organising social care for their elderly parents. Nearly 1.4 million older people in the UK are missing out on the care they need, due to difficulties in accessing information about what is available to them.
Ultramed has developed MyPreOp® which is the flagship program in the Ultraprep® suite of six integrated products
Smoke Free is a behavioural change app used to support people giving up smoking. The app incorporates evidence on how to quit smoking and includes more than 30 different behaviour-change techniques. Users are encouraged to stay smoke-free through consistent notifications of progress in terms of time, money saved, health improvements made and more. They can also employ the app’s “missions”, which are daily tasks designed to help people quit and stay smoke-free. A Smoke Free-led, randomised control trial of more than 28,000 participants found that those who engaged with the missions were twice as likely to remain abstinent from smoking three months following their set quit date. A subsequent randomised control trial found that the app’s automated chatbot increased quit rates even further.
Funded by an Innovate UK grant, the Oxford AHSN is working with Osler Diagnostics, a health technology company developing innovative biosensor technology and products. Osler’s main product is a portable, handheld device capable of taking a drop of blood and quickly testing for a panel of biomarkers.
Working with the NHS, Health Navigator helps predict and prevent avoidable urgent and emergency care, by combining artificial intelligence with proactive health coaching. This helps address the £6bn challenge of patients who frequently present at A&E as a result of not receiving the sort of holistic care (support, social services, referrals to planned care) that could have avoided the need for them to return. In addition to significantly improved patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), some deployments in NHS environments have shown: a 59% decrease in unplanned admissions; 52% reduction in A&E attendances; and nearly 40% reduction in total hospital costs for their patients (including bed days, NELs, attendances).
The Oxford-based firm Sensyne Health (formerly Drayson Health) uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop medicines and aims to improve patient care through the analysis and commercialisation of real-world evidence from large databases of anonymised patient data in collaboration with NHS Trusts.
Ufonia is an artificially intelligent system that monitors health and wellness through a conversation with a medical device voice ‘chat-bot’. Ufonia can provide autonomous, automated telephone-based clinical follow-up, which is applicable to the capture of patient reported outcome measures in numerous clinical areas.
Healthy.io is a health-tech company with a mission to improve healthcare outcomes by turning the smartphone into a regulatory approved clinical device. Its first product line, Dip.io, allows patients to do regular urine tests at home using their smartphone cameras and a digital testing kit and measures 10 parameters, indicating a range of infections, chronic illnesses and pregnancy-related complications.
