12 January 2017
£900K awarded to develop innovations that support self-care and independence in children with long term conditions.
With six percent of children in the UK living with disability, ingenious life changing solutions can ensure they have the best start in life. SBRI Healthcare today announced it is to fund nine companies developing innovations that aim to provide children living with disability and long term conditions with the potential to live life to the full. The successful technologies recognise the importance of encouraging independence and focus on restoring function to the disabled and providing appropriate support for self-care and remote monitoring.
In Wessex, xim - a digital innovator company based in Southampton - is one of the winners of this funding under the 'self-care and remote monitoring' category.
Xim’s project will develop a game-changing platform for passive and contactless vital signs measurement of children with asthma aged 10+ who are at risk of unplanned hospital admission. Assuming the form of a mirror (but accessible by mobile devices too), the unique selling point of this platform is its ability to collect five vital signs whilst a child is performing everyday activities, e.g. hair brushing.
Xim’s CEO Laurence Pearce said: “We are delighted to have won this award which promises to make a real impact. Young people can struggle to stay on top of monitoring their health condition, our solution will continually and automatically do it for them.
"Not only will we hand over vital information to youngsters, their clinicians and parents, but we will benefit the healthcare system as a whole by reducing the kind of wholly preventable hospital admissions that put more pressure on the NHS.”
The innovations also address a key challenge in developing technology for children and young people associated with growth and development. They have been judged to be age specific, versatile and adaptable to meet rapid physiological and anatomical changes.
With awards of up to £100,000 each, the successful companies (and supporting Academic Health Science Network) are:
Philippa Hedley-Takhar, Head of Investment and Partnerships for Yorkshire and Humber AHSN commented: “Children and young people with long term conditions spend much of their childhood in healthcare environments. This competition was designed to stimulate development of solutions to improve quality of life, promote independence and individual empowerment identified as a much needed areas of focus from families, young people and clinicians.”
Professor Paul Dimitri, Clinical Lead at the Technology Innovation Transforming Child Health (TITCH) network said: “TITCH is a national network that has developed an approach to pediatric innovation to address the problems associated with the niche and often neglected market for technology in this field. The number, diversity and quality of applications received demonstrate the level of commitment to ensuring the best healthcare for children and give them the best opportunities in the future.”
SBRI Healthcare is an NHS England initiative, led by the country’s 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), that co-develops innovative products to address unmet health needs. This competition is led by Yorkshire & Humber AHSN and the TITCH network.
The programme works with leading healthcare players to identify areas where technology can be applied to address major healthcare challenges. The nine successful projects have been selected on their potential value to the health service and on the improved outcomes delivered to patients. The companies will be supported and fully funded to demonstrate the technical feasibility of their proposed concept for a six month development phase. Those businesses demonstrating best value and greatest technical feasibility at this stage (phase 1) will progress through (phase 2) to be further supported and funded to take their technologies through to commercialisation.
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