The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) announced the 10 innovators who will be supported to spread their innovations in the NHS over the next three years.
The selected innovations range from a solution to support common types of hearing loss in children, digital assessment tools, AI clinical support and a musculoskeletal self management platform.
Through a ‘robust’ and ‘multi-stage’ application and assessment process involving clinical, patient and commercial assessors, each innovation and representative (‘Fellow’) were selected.
The panel was drawn from a wide range of organisations such as NHS England and NHS Improvement, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and The Health Foundation.
The ten innovators and innovations in the NIA 2022 are:
- Abtrace, Umar Naeem Ahmad (CEO): A digital health software solution for GP surgeries, integrating with existing electronic healthcare record systems to extract data, processing against guidelines and delivering an output to clinicians and managers.
- DemDx, Lorin Gresser (CEO and Co-Founder): A CE marked AI-enhanced clinical reasoning platform that supports healthcare professionals to order investigations, and diagnose and make care recommendations.
- DigiBete, Maddie Julian (CEO): A digital platform for diabetes education, training, awareness, and support to families at home. The app will allow diabetes teams to create their own personalised digital service and paperless clinic to support patients.
- getUbetter, Carey McClellan, (CEO and Clinical Director): An evidence-based digital self management platform for all common musculoskeletal conditions, that will help to provide digitally enabled MSK support and care self-management across the whole care pathway.
- Hear Glue Ear, Tasmin Holland Brown (Founder): An affordable solution for one of the most common types of hearing loss in children – glue ear. A headset will support hearing alongside the ‘Hear Glue Ear’ app which will provide speech and language enrichment, education and home management of clue ear between appointments.
- Maxwell Plus, Tom White (COO and C-Founder): Maxwell Plus is said to help diagnose prostate cancer early by analysing patients’ blood, demographic and MRI data online with AI and expert clinicians to try and find prostate cancer early.
- The Real Birth Company, Zoe Wright (Founder and Director): The Real Birth Digital Workshop is a multi-language birth preparation resource which provides interactive, animated, user friendly, and accessible information to empower women.
- Thalamos, Arden Tomison (Founder and CEO): Thalamos’ eMHA software provides an end-to-end digital pathway inline with the Mental Health Act.
- UNEEG Medical, Chris Young (Sales & Market Development Manager): The 24/7 EEG SubQ is a CE marked subcutaneous implant and external recorder solution that will allow for continuous EEG monitoring day and night up to 15 months, in a real-life setting.
- Written Medicine, Ghalib Khan (Co-Founder and Director): This will enable clinicians at the point of prescribing, dispensing, discharge to print instructions, information and warnings in bilingual or accessible formats – comprising 15+ languages, pictograms, and illustrations drawn from datasets of 3000+ phrases.
Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director for NHS England and NHS Improvement and Chair of the NIA, commented: “The individuals selected this year join an existing group of 72 Fellows and Alumni who share their passion for improving NHS patient outcomes and staff experience. Their success of spreading to over 2,785 NHS sites speaks for itself.”
Dr Chris Laing, NHS Innovation Accelerator Director and Chief Executive Officer of UCLPartners explained: “The ten individuals successful in their bid to join the NHS Innovation Accelerator this year have gone through a rigorous assessment process and shown themselves to be ready to scale in England’s NHS. We are happy to welcome them to the NIA and look forward to supporting them in their innovation journey.”
