UK Lifescience Industry issue 11

Issue 11

United Kingdom

Advances in health technology

INDUSTRY

Bodies of data

Putting data to work for the benefit of patient healthcare

Enhancement: Improving medical technology Future watch: Potential healthcare game changers Made in the UK: Keeping manufacturing on home turf Meeting the unmet: Responding to unmet clinical needs Going global: Cracking global markets

INSIDE: Training troops to fight Ebola in West Africa

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4-5

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Bodies of data

A message from the editor

This edition

The future of healthcare Digital tools are increasingly being integrated into healthcare, both for patients and for clinicians.

Delving into the developing socio-techno-cultural Issue 5 dimensions of digital health, the use of health apps can increase a patient’s interest in staying healthy.

Issue 5 Self-monitoring progress could influence a patient’s decisions about what food to eat, the level ofIssue activity 5 for the day, and whether to smoke or drink, driving towards a healthier lifestyle.

Enhancement

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2012 ISSUE 4

Data, diagnostics and genetics

2012 ISSUE 4

2012 ISSUE 4

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Data is now integral to clinical care, with efficient sharing of clinical information being essential to the development of modern healthcare systems and research. Using knowledge, data and accurate diagnosis, precision medicine is expected to transform medicine in the coming decades, improving outcomes for patients and the healthcare system.

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Check your dates

UK Lifescience Industry Event Calendar 2016

FOR PUBLISHEDPUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PUBLISHED FOR

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by Teamworks. stated. © MediWales Ltd. 2012 456 Web: www.mediwales.com Tel: 029 2047Jess 3456 Web: www.mediwales.com Editor: Fisher jess@uklifescienceindustry.com www.teamworksdesign.com n this publication do not necessarily represent jess@uklifescienceindustry.com Contact: The views dual Medilink UK members unless explicitly expressed For editorial and advertising opportunitiesAdvertising: Charlotte Tyson in this publication do not Ltd. 2012 Advertising: Charlotte Tyson of individual necessarily represent the opinions Editor: Jess Fisher please contact: ruth@uklifescienceindustry.com ruth@uklifescienceindustry.com Medilink UK members unless explicitly stated.

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Putting data to work for the benefit of patient healthcare

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12 Data-driven approach targets improvement in healthcare 14 Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus takes shape 15 Data mining for biomarkers 16 Hair-loss solution for chemotherapy patients

Future watch 18 Patient innovation 19 Investing in future talent 20 PINCER tightens controls for patient safety 21 Tablets set to improve care for the elderly 22 World’s first national tissue bank for pancreatic cancer research

Going global 24 Mathematical diagnostics hits US market 25 Arab Health opens up new markets 26 Dubai unveiling for carbon fibre wheelchair 27 Randox Laboratories improving lives around the globe 28 The value of Horizon 2020 funding to SME innovation

Made in the UK 30 Device for rapid detection of heart conditions 31 Wireless body sensors monitor patients’ vital signs 32 Digital Health quarter for Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator 33 SureScreen – Application of innovation 34 Funding for anti-biofilm breakthroughs

Meeting the unmet 36 Clinical innovation booming for Wales NHS 37 Innovative interactive data exploration tools 38 Moving forward with AGILE 39 St Andrews develops fibre-optic healing light 40 Vacuderm makes cannulation safe and successful

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View an interactive version of this edition at www.medilinkuk.com

Bodies of data Putting data to work for the benefit of patient healthcare

As digital tools are integrating firmly into the health technology industry, patients are increasingly interested in taking their treatment and care into their own hands.

Connecting patients and professionals with simultaneous access to data can support clinical decision-making and ease the strain on hospitals, with the use of health monitoring devices helping to progress medical research.

It is widely understood that the interaction between lifestyle and genetics can influence the risk of developing health problems. Now, with the movement of the ‘measured self’, key data can be gathered to allow scientists to better understand the way genetic and environmental factors impact health.

So, how do we use a digital health application in a clinical setting? It can be incorporated into professional healthcare using data to inform and support clinical decision-making, which can lead to the remote delivery of expert professional care and advice.

Hospital stays are the highest cost incurred during a patients flow through the health system. snap40 has created a medical-grade wearable device to continuously monitor patients in hospital or at home, monitoring more vital indicators than anyone on the market. The company uses algorithms to automatically identify high-risk patients, far in advance of them becoming sick. This allows low-risk patients to be safely kept at home or discharged from hospital earlier; producing significant cost benefits and improving patient wellbeing.

snap40’s medical grade wearable device in use

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Developing plans to fully integrate e-Health into the NHS will allow clinicians to recognise when a patient needs to make a hospital visit. This system wastes less time for both patients and healthcare professionals by developing a better understanding of the problem before taking it to a clinical setting.

Last year, Time for Medicine deployed the first module of its online diagnostic platform in the UHB Allergy Service by asking patients to enter their allergy history securely into Clinical Immunologist-authored questionnaires.

This system is the first example in the UK of patients entering data from home to be accessed by NHS consultants through a private and secure platform. The company has worked with over 60 clinical consultants, developing the approach in 20 specialties and accounting for over a third of the 100 million annual NHS outpatient appointments, which cost a total of over £20 billion. The company has recently released a private allergy service at www.mydocforhealth.com in conjunction with Thermo Fisher and many of the UK’s leading immunologists.

Digital tools can also enhance training for clinicians. The Crisis Checklists Collaborative (3C) is an international patient safety research group initiated by

Scotland:

The Scottish Government’s 2020 Vision for health and care

Northern Ireland:

The Digital Northern Ireland 2020 project Initiated following consultation with a number of players across Northern Ireland, the Digital Northern Ireland 2020 project was developed to realise the full potential of the investments made in a digital infrastructure by taking a proactive leadership approach to its exploitation. Access to high quality communications and digital technology platforms will be of significant importance for developing both economies and services to citizens, whilst improving quality of life.

The Scottish Government’s 2020 Vision for health and care includes a strategic approach to eHealth, which focuses on the benefits and outcomes experienced by health and care professionals, by helping them to work with patients to re-design and improve services. With a vision that everyone’s health and wellbeing can be better supported through greater use of digital technology, eHealth will be key to accessing, using and sharing information to deliver integrated health and social care.

England: Wales:

Informed health and care – A digital health and social care strategy for Wales The digital health and social care strategy for Wales aims to make the most of the benefits that digital services can offer, allowing health and social care workers access to digital tools and information to easily co-ordinate care and support people in their homes or local communities. The initiative also ensures patients are able to access their own information relating to health and care needs, enabling them to be in control of their own health and well-being and to play an active role in decisions about the services, care and support we need.

National Information Board’s Personalised Health and Care 2020 Framework In its drive to deliver the highest quality of care for patients, NHS England’s information technology and informatics agenda is directed at enabling commissioners, providers and suppliers to make informed decisions about the investments and approaches to adopt technologies that will best support this outcome. The overarching objective of harnessing the information revolution is to make the NHS paperless by 2020.

clinicians from Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, developed with Galactig. 3C’s Crisis Checklists are aide-memoirs supporting training on medical and surgical wards, covering checklists for sepsis, asthma, torrential bleeding from ulcers, and safe transport of critically ill patients. Clinicians, researchers, programmers, graphic designers, and human factor specialists from the Royal Air Force in Anglesey turned a complex pathway into a cutting edge tool to manage critical deterioration in hospitalised patients through a unique smart-phone based application. Pilot testing showed that teams using the 3C’s Crisis Checklists were up to 30% faster in implementing life saving treatments with better reliability and earlier escalation to senior staff.

Time for Medicine’s online diagnostic platform

The world today is interactive. Our ways of sharing intelligence are constantly evolving and our health and care providers are changing with it. The NHS across the UK is working on a number of initiatives and strategies to integrate digital health and offer more easily accessible and personalised services with effective communication between professionals and users.

An increasingly digital future keeps our healthcare at the pace of our information technology; fast, flexible and mobile.

With a better-connected healthcare system and more tools to monitor and understand health, we hope to continue to improve and better manage the wellbeing of the nation.

UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

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Data, diagnostics and Exploring precision medicine for effective treatment The ‘one size fits all’ approach to patient treatment is increasingly recognised as being both ineffective and costly. Clinicians and researchers are now looking to precision medicine to ensure that a patient receives the most appropriate treatment at the right time.

Precision medicine is a medical model, sometimes called stratified or personalised medicine, which proposes customised healthcare, with medical decisions, practices, and products being tailored to the individual patient.

By identifying which approaches will be effective for which patients, the method can improve response rates with quicker and less costly decisions about treatment and an easier route to recovery.

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

The technique involves grouping patients based on factors including their genetic profile, response to a particular drug, or the molecular basis of their disease, rather than the traditional symptoms-based approach.

This means that the patient receives a precise drug treatment at the optimum dose and with the correct combination of other medication, to deliver improved healthcare outcomes.

Predicting how a patient will respond to a treatment can be done using pharmacogenetics, the study of inherited genetic differences in drug metabolic pathways, and pharmacogenomics, the role of acquired and inherited genetic differences, aided by a range of diagnostics tools and informatics.

Looking at large groups of patients to try and find ways of predicting response to treatment can be effective for patients with cardio-vascular, inflammatory and infectious diseases, and for cancer patients, where scientists make predictions by looking in detail at the cancer cells and their genetic make up.

Researchers from Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and The John Van Geest Cancer Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University have shown that a molecule biomarker called SPAG5 is associated with the clinical outcome and response to combination chemotherapy in patients with specific subtypes of breast cancer. The biomarker can identify patients with a 60% reduction in the risk of death compared with those not exhibiting the molecule.

This makes it a novel biomarker that enables the tailoring of breast cancer treatment to individual patients, and the molecule has the potential to be a novel therapeutic target in future.

Researchers are increasingly using precision medicine to develop a better understanding of disease progression and deliver appropriate treatment for patients suffering from diseases that are health and social care priorities, such as cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

It is estimated that 60% of people with Alzheimer’s have not been properly diagnosed and therefore are not being given vital drugs and care. The capability to distinguish between the levels and progression of the disease could enable drug developers to substantially improve patient care and people with mild cognitive impairment are likely to benefit the most from such disease-modifying drugs.

genetics The NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for Mental Health, Proteome Sciences and Merck Millipore successfully collaborated on a 1,000 sample Alzheimer’s disease biomarker validation study. Preliminary data suggested that blood protein biomarkers could help to identify dementia in preclinical phase, or predict progression from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. During the study, researchers tested biomarker panels of between 11 and 16 proteins in a very large replication study. These biomarkers have significant potential to form the basis of a series of simple blood tests for the diagnosis and management of Alzheimer’s.1

By combining accurate diagnosis with effective service delivery, precision medicine is expected to transform medicine in the coming decades, improving outcomes for patients and the healthcare system. A value of £14 billion has been put on the global market for tests, therapies and solutions, and this is expected to grow to £50-60 billion in 2020.2

In half of all melanoma patients, the cancer is driven by a mutation in the BRAF gene, which can result in a fault in the BRAF protein. The faulty protein can cause uncontrolled cell growth resulting in spread of the tumour. Roche has developed a polymerase chain reaction-based diagnostic test that can identify tumours that carry the mutated gene, allowing patients to be treated with a therapy that blocks the abnormal function of the BRAF protein, shrinking the tumour.

Precision medicine combines the use of biomarkers, diagnostic tests and data-based insights to understand a patient’s disease more precisely. This knowledge allows a healthcare professional to select treatments with safer, more predictable and costeffective outcomes, so the development of new IT and e-health systems is fundamental to the success of the UK’s precision medicine industry.

Moleculomics, a start up from Swansea that has recently expanded to North America, is innovating new precision medicine approaches and products based on computation of interactions of compounds with the entire 3D human proteome, accounting for individual polymorphic variation. This allows assessment of the impact of the genetic composition on the efficacy and clearance of a particular therapeutic, and identification of potential adverse events.

The approaches may be applied early in the drug discovery pipeline to incorporate the effects of genetic variation across a whole target group or population, or in the development of clinical stratification tools to be employed with currently prescribed medicines, particularly in polypharmacy.

These techniques can also be used to develop better predictions of adverse drug reactions, which currently account for 6% of hospital admissions.3 This approach could save lives whilst creating significant cost savings for the NHS.

The Precision Medicine Catapult is the UK’s innovation centre for precision medicine, showcasing the UK as a key location for the development and delivery of precision medicine as a targeted approach to healthcare.

The initial locations of the regional centres of excellence network are Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford.

Each centre will engage in regional precision medicine activities within the UK-wide network, co-ordinated from the Cambridge headquarters. The centres will work on locally driven programmes, developing innovative technologies and solutions for broader use across the UK’s healthcare sector.2

1. http://www.nocri.nihr.ac.uk/media/13712/blood_test_-_a_simple_diagnosis_for_alzheimer_s.pdf 2. https://pm.catapult.org.uk/about-us 3. http://www.uk-pgx-stratmed.co.uk

UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

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Operation GRITROCK: Troops trained for Ebola Virus Disease outbreak

By September 2014, the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa was spiralling out of control, with unprecedented transmission rates.

Epidemiology modelling suggested alarming forecasts in the spread of the virus; this was the largest and most complex outbreak of Ebola ever reported. The outbreak was caused by the Zaire strain, which is typically associated with mortality rates of 50-90%. With around 27,000 cases, West Africa was overwhelmed with transmission rates.

Ebola treatment centres were created to allow isolation and safe treatment of suspected and confirmed cases of the disease to reduce fatality rates and prevent further transmission. However, despite a rapid scaling up of treatment centres focussed in Liberia and Sierra Leone, there were inadequate numbers of healthcare workers.

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According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report published in May 2015, the local health service workforce had borne the brunt of the outbreak, being disproportionately affected (21-32 times more likely to be infected) than the general population. In Sierra Leone, 368 of the country’s healthcare workers were infected and 69% of these died. Nurses and nurses’ aides represented 57% of this number and the country lost some of its most significant medical leaders.

There was a real risk that the country’s already fragile health service would be completely disseminated, hampering the country’s recovery for years to come.

The deployment of foreign medical teams to support host nations was requested by WHO and the Ministries of Health in the affected countries.

Despite this effort, a military response was required to contain the epidemic.

Operation GRITROCK was the name given to the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) mission in Sierra Leone.

During planning for Operation GRITROCK, predictions about the course of the outbreak were dire.

Initial capability was sufficient only for a small 8-bed unit with four beds for recovery, making 12 in total. This unit would be reserved for healthcare professionals. Other treatment units were built with the help of British military expertise, including a 70-bed unit run by Save the Children, with funding support from the Department for International Development (DFID) to cater for the general population.

The rationale for establishing a unit for healthcare professionals was not to stop the spread of Ebola and treat everybody that deserved care, but to increase confidence of overseas workers that were coming to the country to help. This caused an ethical dilemma of empty beds in an Ebola treatment facility for healthcare professionals, whilst people were dying outside. The empty beds created the most prevalent and difficult ethical challenge faced during the deployment. However, to achieve clinical success treatment delivery and patient care had to be finely balanced against staff safety.

The first challenge was to understand what could be the highest level of UK standard care that is safely delivered at a tented facility within a jungle environment. WHO recommended a staff ratio of 4:1 nurses to patients and 1:12 doctors to patients to balance required levels for patient care and allow adequate rest. Equally important to clinical staff were the support staff specialising in leadership, water and sanitation, logistics and infection prevention and control experts who also required basic and mission-specific skills training.

To ensure staff safety whilst delivering treatment, it was imperative that all processes were highly methodical, understood by all and repeatedly rehearsed. A simulated layout of the Ebola treatment environment was developed to create a highly effective educational platform, achieving excellence through rehearsal and repetition.

Army Medical Services Training Centre (AMSTC) is a centre of excellence for the training of deployed hospital care that is delivered first-class regardless of the environment. The centre is responsible for training, assessment and validation of medical treatment facilities, and uses the methodology of assurance known as HOSPEX, which is internationally recognised as best practice. For Operation GRITROCK, the assurance process had to be reviewed, adjusted and compressed without compromise to ensure deployment timelines could be achieved whilst providing assurance of safe systems of operating.

Ebola patient management required strong teamwork and a relative breakdown of the traditional hierarchical nature and roles of doctors and nurses.

This process of changing historic culture proved suited to the HOSPEX process.

The utilisation of tested method allowed for risk to be identified and dealt with using the risk management methodology of; tolerate, treat, transfer and terminate.

This evolving process assisted greatly in educating and building individual and collective confidence.

With a deeper understanding of the risks and challenges that this environment presented, innovative developments were required to ensure staff safety was enhanced. Novel procurements were sourced; such as Bluetooth patient note transfer and a two-way video and microphone system, which allowed remote monitoring of staff and patients in all areas of the facility.

Drawing blood for tests was a highrisk process and staff effort was focussed on ensuring individual skill levels were developed with maximum safety. A suitable device for training did not commercially exist, so AMSTC developed a safe cannulation sleeve to allow healthcare workers to practice this invasive procedure whilst wearing personal protective equipment with a human patient actor until reaching a high standard of confidence and competence.

The same training design and delivery process was performed to assist in developing confidence for anaesthetists performing the invasive protocol of inserting a central venous catheter into an Ebola positive patient. The utilisation of such novel training adjuncts proved effective for a high risk and challenging process.

Training delivery in areas such as palliative care and handling of the deceased within this environment were a new challenge for AMSTC. Relevant training devices had to be designed to train and assess competence in invasive protocols such as catheterisation and faecal management. In order to achieve this, AMSTC designed and produced an anatomically correct palliative care doll, which provided the capability to conduct invasive protocols as well as provide an appropriate tool for handling of the deceased.

The success of the efforts of delivering UK standard care to Ebola patients in the rigor of a West African jungle was a benchmark event for clinical education, training and safety. The capability that AMSTC developed in such short notice was highly successful. The operating procedures, assurance methodology and concepts of building an effective hospital system through this process of collective preparation are reproducible and could be attributed to a wider spectrum of healthcare preparation.

www.army.mod.uk

UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

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Med-Tech Innovation Expo As a key platform that can push forward essential networking and business opportunities, the Med-Tech Innovation Expo is positioned to help exploit the growth potential for the life science industry in the UK. Now four events in one, this year’s Expo will include the Med-Tech Innovation Exhibition, the UK Med-Tech Conference, the Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards and Gala Dinner and a range of specialist seminars.

Med-Tech Innovation Exhibition As the largest manufacturing exhibition in the UK, the Med-Tech Innovation Exhibition features more than 130 companies covering packaging, medical electronics, medical plastics and manufacturing.

The exhibition connects stakeholders involved in the innovation process, bringing together all parties involved in creating the next generation of medical devices, from concept and design to manufacture.

Drawing a wide range of visitors that are servicing the medical technology industry in different ways, this event can be instrumental in moving forward the development of individual components into full-scale medical devices.

UK Med-Tech Innovation Conference Addressing the key trends and topics within the medical technology sector, the UK Med-Tech Innovation conference includes a keynote presentation on creating value through innovation by Dr Amir Babaei-Mahani, Senior Director of New Ventures for Medical Devices at Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

The conference programme also includes an update on the Accelerated Access Review from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department of Health (DH), as well as implications for medical technology businesses due to the new medical device regulation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards & Gala Dinner The Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards & Gala Dinner celebrates the best advancements from healthcare businesses from around the UK. This year, the event welcomes national broadcaster, Paul Sinha, as the guest speaker and presenter on the evening of Wednesday 20th April.

2016 finalists are:

Digital Life Sciences – Medilink West Midlands

Innovation:

IXICO – SEHTA

Cardiocity – Medilink North West Trio-Healthcare – Medilink Yorkshire & Humber

Rocialle – MediWales Core Health Consultancy – Medilink South West

NuVision Biotherapies Ltd – Medilink East Midlands

Start up:

Primasil Silicones Ltd – Medilink West Midlands

Microbiosensors – Medilink North West

Nervecentre Silicones Ltd – SEHTA

SleepCogni – Medilink Yorkshire & Humber

Huntleigh – MediWales QuantuMDx – Medilink North East

Ayva Pharma Limited – Medilink East Midlands

Ultramed Ltd – Medilink South West

Spring Active Limited – Medilink West Midlands

Export:

Walk With Path – SEHTA

Vernacare – Medilink North West Brandon Medical – Medilink Yorkshire & Humber Hospital Aids – Medilink East Midlands Kimal PLC – Medilink West Midlands

Salar Surgical – MediWales Socksons UK Ltd – Medilink South West Outstanding achievement:

AbBaltis – SEHTA

Healthcare Matters – Medilink North West

MedaPhor – MediWales

Sidhil – Medilink Yorkshire & Humber

Physicool Ltd – Medilink South West

Inspiration Healthcare Ltd – Medilink East Midlands

Partnership with the NHS:

NutraHealth – Medilink West Midlands

Advance Medical Solutions – Medilink North West

Rescon Ltd – SEHTA

InHealthcare – Medilink Yorkshire & Humber

Sharp Clinical Services – MediWales

Wellbeing Software Group – Medilink East Midlands

Kemdent – Medilink South West

QuantuMDx – Medilink North East

Other key areas of the programme include digital health, precision medicine and a patient-centred approach to healthcare.

www.mtiexpo-uk.com

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

c nects M E D I WA L E S

NHS Collaborative Conference

1 DAY CONFERENCE

●

PRESENTATIONS

●

EXHIBITION

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Mercure Holland House Hotel

Cardiff 6 July 2016 ●

●

Keynote Address:

Andrew Goodall

Director General, Department for Health and Social Services and Chief Executive

NHS Wales

WORKSHOPS

●

CPD CERTIFICATION

The Welsh NHS:

The first of its kind in Wales, this event offers:

clinical, care and research communities meet to share in celebration of innovation and collaboration

● Health and care research & innovation showcase:

Presentations from two parallel streams Presentations from health boards and trusts sharing the potential of new developments in research and patient care.

● NHS industry collaborations:

An opportunity to explore successful industry projects.

Feature zones - Exhibition, technology demonstrations and innovations that are transforming patient care.

Seminars - Interactive training workshops, celebrating and sharing success as well as exploring issues and challenges.

Industry symposiums - Company led training and skills sessions.

For further information email:

connects-nhs@mediwales.com www.mediwales.com/connects-nhs

The Bill Mapleson Centre A new state-of-the-art centre based in the Cynon Valley: Medical Device Testing Unique testing facilities for a wide range of medical products. Built on the expertise and years of experience in testing medical devices for industry and the MHRA at the Department of Anaesthetics in Cardiff University.

Clinical Consultancy Access to health care professionals with a wide variety of expertise in anaesthetics, pain and critical care. The Department of Anaesthetics has a long history of collaborative research with industry partners.

Training Courses / Simulation Training courses with high-fidelity simulation and video recording / playback facilities.

For more details please visit: http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/bmccu/ @ CardiffBMC For inquiries please contact Jeff Clark: clarkj11@cf.ac.uk or 029 2074 4886 Bill Mapleson Centre, Cwm Cynon Business Park, Mountain Ash, CF45 4ER

UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

9

Enhancement Data-driven approach targets improvement in healthcare Modern society is developing a datadriven approach to healthcare, evident within the health service in Scotland, which allocates a unique identifier that links to electronic health records for every member of the Scottish population.

With a stable population but a relatively high incidence of chronic disease including heart disease, stroke, diabetes and multiple sclerosis, Scotland has established itself as a valuable location for the development and clinical trials of novel treatments and therapies. It has built up a formidable supply chain of pharmaceutical services and both preclinical and clinical CROs to facilitate this process, consisting of 150 companies with a turnover of £1.2bn employing over 9,000 people. With the advent of the $1000 genome made possible by Next Generation Sequencing techniques, the power of rapid, genomic-based

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

analysis to more accurately characterise patients’ conditions, their predisposition to respond to particular therapies, or even predict any possible adverse effects of a particular treatment has been realised.

With the opening of the £20m Stratified Medicine Scotland Innovation Centre (SMS-IC) in Glasgow in 2014 (involving its founding Industrial Partner members ThermoFisher Scientific and Aridhia Informatics), two MRC/EPSRC-funded Molecular Pathology Nodes in Glasgow (£3.4m) and Edinburgh/St.Andrews (£2m), and the formation of the £15m Scottish Genomes Partnership between the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and US-company Illumina in 2015, Scotland now has the capability of supplementing the rich, historical data sets already accessible under appropriate governance, with disease-focused genotypic and phenotypic data from discrete patient populations.

The recent announcement of an additional £4m of funding from the Scottish Government to create the Scottish Precision Medicine Ecosystem, is therefore the latest of a series of initiatives that have helped Scotland to establish considerable

resource, capabilities and expertise in the area of stratified and precision Medicine which promises to have significant impact in our future approach to healthcare.

The Ecosystem will co-ordinate precision medicine resources and opportunities across Scotland, bringing together the findings from individual research projects and improving information sharing in the fight against diseases. The University of Edinburgh hosts the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research as well as the Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics – two leading centres that have, under the leadership of Prof. Andrew Morris along with Prof.

Anna Dominiczak from the University of Glasgow and SMS-IC, played a central role in establishing the Scottish Precision Medicine Ecosystem.

Enhancement SMS-IC has already implemented four Exemplar Projects to demonstrate the core capabilities in place, to make rapid progress in the understanding of the development of chronic diseases and to design more effective treatments for defined patient populations. These studies are:

l1 Possible extension of the use of PARP inhibitor drugs

to a wider group of patients with High Grade Serious Ovarian Cancer

2 Identification of a genetic signature for Gefitinib - an l

Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase antagonist - response in patients with Oesophageal Cancer

3 Identification of a genetic signature in Rheumatoid l

Arthritis patients that can predict those who will and those who will not respond to standard methotrexate treatment

4 Investigation of the observed significant variation in l

vitro responses to known drugs, using human tissue samples collected from patients with Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD) or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

A further two projects are planned as a result of the further Scottish Government funding:

l1 Precision-PANC is a project intended to rapidly

characterise an individual patient’s pancreatic cancer and introduce each to an appropriate clinical trial designed to treat that specific tumour type. This project coincides with a recent analysis of the blueprint of pancreatic cancer, revealing for the first time that there are 4 distinct types of mutation. The initiative is structured as a consortium of approximately 100 clinical and research members from across five CRUK centres including Glasgow, Manchester, Cambridge, Oxford and London.

l2 FutureMS aims to develop an evidence-based predictor

for disease progression in patients with Multiple Sclerosis. This will deliver a toolset for clinics, allowing personalised and proactive disease-modifying treatment for multiple sclerosis that will improve the quality of clinical decisions around risk or benefit relationships with existing treatment options.

Industry activity and participation within the Scottish Precision Medicine Ecosystem is growing with the involvement of large companies such as ThermoFisher Scientific and Illumina, and a specialised SME base offering support and innovation in diagnostics, data handling and data analysis.

Partners of the SMS-IC are Aridhia, Fios Genomics, Pharmatics, Sistemic, Destina Genomics, Biopta and Arrayjet, with many others represented at Industry Precision Medicine Focus Groups run by SMS-IC and the Scottish Life Sciences Association. To help facilitate collaboration, technology development and validation in this fast-growing area, Scottish Enterprise has recently launched its £3.5m Genomic Medicine Industry Catalyst Fund – initially for Scottish companies, but will soon be rolled out to companies outside Scotland who wish to collaborate with or become part of this concerted, national programme of cutting edge activities in precision medicine.

www.scottish-enterprise.com

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus takes shape Plans for the new £40.5 million Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus (AIEC) are starting to take shape.

The exciting new proposals, designed

by IBI Group will provide world-leading facilities and expertise to create marketfocused solutions for the agri-tech industry.

Funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Welsh Government and Aberystwyth University, this flagship scheme will be designed to empower researchers to work more collaboratively and productively in a commercially focused environment.

The Campus will house a wide range of facilities including a Bio-refining Centre, Future Food Centre, Analytical Science Laboratories and access to a Seed Processing and BioBank Facility. It will also provide formal and informal meeting areas together with office accommodation for industry.

“The research carried out at Aberystwyth University is globally pioneering, We are very proud to be involved with such an exciting development and to be given the chance to design an innovative hub that will inspire successful collaborations between researchers and budding entrepreneurs.”

Mark Drane Architect IBI Group

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

IBI Group has delivered world-class facilities for some of Wales’ major scientific investments in recent years, including the Haydn Ellis Building at Maindy Park Innovation Campus, Health Vision Swansea at Morriston Hospital, and Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC).

Mark Drane added: “We have been supported by our in-house R&D programme IBI THiNK for over 20 years, through which our team of designers can focus their dedication to exploring, developing and implementing new solutions that optimise the way we use space. From clean rooms to laser suites, we understand the challenges and rapid change faced by our scientist and medical research clients and how high quality design can add value to long-term investments.”

Speaking about the new AIEC facility, Richard Golledge of IBI said: “A scientific and commercial facility, it will be designed to stimulate entrepreneurial spirit, industry relationships and help initiate start-up companies. This will be done by bringing the facilities together within a single building.

“Through our ‘4 Labs 4 Cities’ research project, which is an analysis of metric data and post occupancy evaluation of research facilities that IBI has designed within the UK and North America, we understand the importance of bringing varied research groups together, to help foster collaboration, incorporating collision spaces to stimulate new and exciting research ideas.

“Scientific research in the UK represents the leading edge of a global industry and

in order to maintain world-renowned research, which is currently delivered from Aberystwyth University, it is vital we develop innovative building and facilities that are responsive to change, can accommodate evolving research, are energy conscious and inspire collaboration and productivity.”

Huw Watkins, AIEC Project Director said: “We look forward to working closely with the team at IBI Group to progress the development of this exciting project and have already benefited from their approach, relevant experience and creativity.

“We will also be hosting supply chain events in spring for early engagement with local and national suppliers interested in the excellent opportunities created by the investment in the Innovation and Enterprise Campus.”

One of the existing buildings on the Gogerddan site has already been refurbished to a high standard and will provide over 300m2 of rentable office accommodation to the business community.

The facility has been modernised to cater specifically for companies wishing to get closer to the world leading research excellence undertaken by scientists at IBERS, Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Biological, Environment and Rural Sciences.

www.ibigroup.com www.sehta.co.uk

Enhancement

Data mining for biomarkers Researchers at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and The John Van Geest Cancer Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University have used a patented data mining approach to look at expression of genes in the human genome for a series of breast cancer patients, to find genes associated with a number of clinical and molecular features that effect the proliferation, or speed, that cells grow and divide.

The technology, including the patented algorithm, was developed by Nottingham Trent University spin-out, CompanDX Ltd, which uses bioinformatics algorithms to identify patients who respond to a particular therapy in new clinical trials or in previous, failed trails. The company identifies patterns in healthcare datasets and applies its technology to trial data to find new disease markers.

The breast cancer patient analysis was run repeatedly for three independent data sources, assessing over 2,500 cases. The results identified 30 genes that consistently appeared across all data sources and were associated with multiple proliferationrelated features in breast cancer, suggesting them as very strong biomarker contenders due to the consistency and number of cases examined.

Of these genes, a marker gene called SPAG5 was found to be one of the most important. To validate the work, further investigations into the way the SPAG5 gene is expressed were conducted in over 10,000 patients across multiple centres; this was the first study to report on the clinical utilities of SPAG5 as a novel oncogene and biomarker in breast cancer.

In aggressive oestrogen receptor (ER) negative breast cancer, patients who were administered anthracycline adjuvant chemotherapy and were positive for

SPAG5 had a 60% reduction in the risk of death in comparison to patients without the gene. Furthermore, in a clinical trial cohort, SPAG5 gene expression and tissue protein expression were found to be independent predictors for higher response rates to combination cytotoxic chemotherapy.

The study showed that for a large clinical cohort, SPAG5 is amplified in specific subtypes of breast cancer. Both its gene and protein products are associated with clinical outcome and response to combination chemotherapy in breast cancer patients, making it an actionable biomarker for tailoring of breast cancer treatment with a potential to be a novel therapeutic target. The study also showed that combining a computational approach using a novel algorithm with proven biological laboratory techniques can lead to the identification of significant biomarkers.

CompanDX is working with partners to develop markers for the stratification of sepsis and SIRS, and is undertaking a major project in China to explore validating markers to be used for a low cost diagnostic for individuals with latent tuberculosis. In the future, CompanDX is looking to apply its technology in all clinical trials where patient stratification matters, seeking to help drug developers create more approved drugs.

www.compandx.artisteer.net

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Hair-loss solution for chemotherapy patients

Collaboration between Primasil Silicones and its academic partner, the University of Huddersfield, has enabled Paxman to bring relief to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy by further reducing the risk of hair-loss during treatment.

formulation that would give the reusable cap greater flexibility to adapt to varying head shapes and sizes.

In addition, the partners looked at ways of increasing automation in the cap’s production to satisfy increasing demand for the product.

The latest innovations in development are being designed to improve the effectiveness and availability of the cooling cap, which Paxman first developed in the late 1990s with help from Primasil. Their main challenge was to create a new silicone rubber

Chemotherapy affects rapidly dividing cells, which include most of our hair follicles. An unintended consequence can be atrophy of the hair root bulb.

The Paxman cooling cap essentially consists of a compact refrigeration system connected to a lightweight silicone rubber cap. By lowering the head and scalp temperature, immediately before, after and during treatment, it reduces blood flow to the follicles and so prevents or minimises damage.

“Primasil silicone’s rubber experience in the medical industry and its understanding of quality standards and certifications has made them an

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

“Our latest joint efforts have produced a better fitting cap which ensures that the coolant running through it is always in close contact with the scalp, all over the head and throughout the treatment. We also now have a manufacturing process that allows increased efficiency and higher volume supply in response to market needs and opportunities.

Silicone rubber is a remarkable material that is flexible in every sense of the word. Through subtle alterations of its chemistry, we can bend and shape its properties to meet most needs. When the right minds are brought together our potential for creating, improving and transforming medical devices is almost limitless.”

Steve Wheeler Managing Director Primasil

invaluable partner in both developing and improving the cooling cap,” Richard Paxman, Managing Director, Paxman Coolers explains.

Medical innovation is not just about curing illnesses, it also helps the treatment process. In the case of chemotherapy, hair loss can have a devastating effect on a patient’s selfimage and confidence, which is why the Paxman cooling cap was originally developed and launched to the market in 2000.

www.primasil.com www.paxmanscalpcooling.com

Enhancement

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

The Science of Design

Future watch Patient innovation Founder of 11Health, Michael Seres, was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at age 12. In 2011, Michael became the 11th patient in the UK to undergo a rare bowel transplant at The Churchill Hospital, Oxford. As a part of his surgery he had an ileostomy, where part of the bowel is brought to the outside of the body and your effluent is collected in a stoma bag.

Living as a patient coping with multiple complex chronic conditions, Michael looked for a solution to his stoma issues.

When he did not find anything, he decided to make one himself.

When patients are given a stoma, they lose control of something most people take for granted; going to the toilet. The

nerve endings in the bowel are cut and patients have no control of the volume that comes out and when it happens, leading to many complications such as leaks and spills. In addition, one of the key metrics for recording gut function is to measure the volume of output by emptying the contents in to a jug and manually recording the result.

Michael used social media to contact around 20,000 patients to ask how they cope with the issue, to see if they experienced the same problems as him and find out how they solved them. It soon became clear that most patients accept this new way of life, but Michael looked for solutions. At every step he went back to the patient community and asked for feedback. He then did

the same with healthcare professionals to ensure everyone felt the same way about the issues he was trying to address.

11Health’s first connected device is the Ostom-i Alert Sensor. It clips on to the outside of most stoma bags and links to a free mobile app, allowing patients to set alarms to alert them as and when their bag is filling. The sensor is designed to replace the nerve endings and therefore alert patients before the bag over flows, enabling better selfmanagement.

The device automatically captures the output data, plotting the volume and time of output on a graph that can then be accessed via email or through the cloud. Using the software, healthcare professionals or carers can remotely monitor the patient, allowing for early intervention to prevent arising issues.

The app can connect to your healthcare professional or carer by message or video and provides 24-hour technical support for both patients at home and nurses who use the device in hospital. Furthermore, there is a hospital app that now enables up to 20 patients to be connected to one iPad, ensuring easy management by nurses and doctors on the ward. Most recently, the app connects to Apple Researchkit, enabling real time data research to be conducted and analysed.

This patient-centred approach empowers patients to take charge of their health and creates a more engaged patient community who want to get on with their lives. Moving forward, 11Health will develop solutions for other areas such as urology, and aims to digitise medical bags in future.

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

www.11health.com

Future watch

Investing in future talent Students in Swansea will be at the forefront of life science and health innovation thanks to winning backing from two global tech companies.

Talent Bank, which is part of the ARCH Programme, has just secured investment from Fujitsu in collaboration with Intel as part of its Fujitsu Ambassador Programme. The investment from two of the world’s leading technology firms will mean Talent Bank’s intake of Swansea students will learn in Wales’s first-ever Fujitsu Innovation Hub. Talent Bank, which is led by Gower College in partnership with the Institute of Life Science at Swansea University Medical School, is a new education and skills programme specifically designed to support the evolving life and health science sector in South West Wales.

The project will ensure young people in Swansea will gain the necessary workbased skills to progress to university, go on to work-based learning or directly into employment.

Beverley Wilson-Smith, Director of Talent Bank said: “We are absolutely thrilled and excited to be chosen as the first Fujitsu Innovation Hub in Wales. The new and innovative Talent Bank facility led by Gower College in partnership with ARCH is scheduled to open at Swansea

University in September. It will be a dedicated learning space based in the Singleton Health Campus.”

The visionary ARCH (A Regional Collaboration for Health) Programme combines Swansea University, ABM University Health Board and Hywel Dda University Health Board, with the aim to improve the health and wealth of the people in South West Wales. As well as creating a healthcare system fit for the 21st century, the ARCH partners are leading the way in ensuring the creation of the next generation of doctors, nurses, healthcare staff, scientists, researchers and innovators. The Talent Bank will provide a dynamic learning experience to help deliver these goals.

Beverley added: “In winning this award along with our ARCH partners, Fujitsu has recognised the potential in our vision.

By working together and with industry, we can design relevant and dynamic learning experiences, using technology as an interface to the real world.”

Through the ARCH programme, the Singleton Health Campus will be a centre of excellence for a broad range of care.

It will also be an environment based on learning, research and innovation to inspire youngsters in the area to take up a STEM-related subject.

Talent Bank will offer 100 learners a full-time education programme. It is aimed at young people aged 16+ wanting to study STEM A-levels or Level 3 vocational and technical qualifications, or a higher apprenticeship programme in either Life Science or Human and Health science for those aged 18+ and employed in the sector.

The Talent Bank will be positioned next to ABMU’s Singleton Hospital site, which will form the new MediPark.

Students will benefit from state-of-theart resources from the Fujitsu Digilab, providing them with one of the most advanced technological learning spaces in the region.

The Fujitsu programme already supports 10 schools, colleges and universities across the UK. The initiative aims to enhance teaching and unleash students’ potential by putting technology at the heart of education. Fujitsu, alongside partners Intel, Brocade and Kyocera, will help fund the set up of the Swansea Innovation Hub, along with the technology to support project-based learning and skills development.

www.swansea.ac.uk

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

PINCER tightens controls for patient safety A ground-breaking project to reduce the risk of patients being prescribed the wrong medication is being rolled out across 150 East Midlands general practices - with plans to increase this to 500 by the end of 2016.

National statistics show that 1 in 20 prescriptions contain an error, leading to 1 in 25 of all admissions to hospital.

This data has been a catalyst in the launch of PINCER, a pharmacistled intervention to reduce errors in medication management, which is being implemented with support from the East Midlands Academic Health Science Network (EMAHSN).

The initiative has already been shown to be effective in reducing prescribing errors in general practices (Lancet 2012) and is supported by the National Institute for Health Care Excellence (NICE) in its ‘Medicines Optimisation Clinical Guideline’.

When used by GPs, PINCER reduces the number of medicinesrelated patient safety incidents by up to 50% and could increase the quality of life for many thousands of patients.

The system has also been shown to save around £2,500 per practice through reduced hospital admissions for patients.

The rollout has been underway since July 2015, with practices uploading the software, identifying at-risk patients and meeting with pharmacists specially trained in the PINCER intervention. Each practice enrolled has access to a system that automatically reviews existing prescriptions and offers expert support from a pharmacist.

PINCER enables the active involvement of a multidisciplinary team that includes GPs, nurses and support staff, resulting

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

in safety improvements for patients.

A review of the way drugs are prescribed is also taking place, with an aim to reduce the risk of patients receiving the wrong medication, particularly for those with a number of conditions who need a combination of different drugs.

The initiative is led by Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust, the Universities of Lincoln and Nottingham, EMAHSN and Clinical Commissioning Groups, with funding from the Health Foundation and EMAHSN. Sadler Stacey, a Primary Care Pharmacist in Rushcliffe CCG said: “The PINCER intervention provides a great opportunity for primary care pharmacists and GPs to work together. Using the PINCER approach allows all involved in the prescribing process to really understand their particular prescribing systems and processes and gain an insight into why prescribing issues are arising.

Discussing ways of overcoming issues identified has been very rewarding and has resulted in many positive

“We are delighted to support this project, which is supporting GPs to make prescribing safer. We believe it will make a massive impact and lasting improvements to the way health care is delivered, across our region and beyond.”

Professor Rachel Munton Managing Director EMAHSN

changes within GP practices regarding their prescribing and monitoring systems.”

Professor Tony Avery, Director of Research at the University of Nottingham’s School of Medicine said: “Medication errors often lead to considerable risk of harm to patients and increase the number of unnecessary admissions to hospital, placing extra pressure on services. So far, rolling out this project across the East Midlands has been going really successfully and we want to thank all partners and the Clinical Commissioning Groups involved.”

www.emahsn.org.uk

Future watch

Tablets set to improve care for the elderly SEHTA has launched a review providing analysis of the way information and communication technology (ICT) applied to the care sector has the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of care provision.

The Technology and Innovation in Care Homes: The SEHTA Review was launched at the Care Showcase in March 2016. Alongside the review, SEHTA has launched a new and unique Personalised Technology Solution Analysis to help the care sector find and implement the right technology solutions to meet their needs.

17% drop in social spending on the elderly since 2009/10

People aged over 85 projected to more than double between 2010 – 2035

2035

2010

The review comes at a time when the healthcare system faces rising costs, rising demand and reduced funding, with a 17% drop in social spending on the elderly since 2009/10, and the number of people aged over 85 projected to more than double between 2010 – 2035.

Both residential and nursing care homes are an indispensable component of the portfolio of long-term care options available in the UK. There are an estimated 5,153 nursing homes and 12,525 residential homes in the UK today providing accommodation to more than 426,000 people. A significant proportion of the UK’s elderly population are resident in these homes – around 4% of people aged 65 or over, and more than 16% of people aged 85 or over. Unless significant changes are made to our health and social care services, this provision of long-term care will be

insufficient to meet the needs of our ageing population.

There is a growing body of research showing that Technology-Enabled Care Services (TECS) have the potential to reduce health and care costs, increase access and improve patient outcomes. However, evidence also shows that health and care practitioners and care home managers have not yet embraced and benefitted from ICT like other sectors have.

Using SEHTA’s TECS costs/benefits calculations, the efficiency gain of digital physiological monitoring of residents is estimated to be more than +£33,400 for a care home per year by using a device that simplifies the recording of vital signs of relevance to a particular resident, for example measuring respiratory rate and temperature for those with COPD; and observations, measuring behaviour and mood for those with dementia. The electronic nature of the device would allow personalised risk scores to be calculated automatically and for early-warning alerts to be escalated automatically too. Further calculations showed the efficiency gain of this technology is conservatively estimated to be more than +£19,500 a year for the NHS. This review has made a convincing case for the potential of technology to reduce the impact of the impending long-term care crisis. Although there are challenges to care homes adopting technologies, they can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of

In 2013, Docobo ran a trial of telehealth in a residential care setting, supplying the care homes with handheld tablets and downloaded software to answer patientspecific questions for up to 8 months, with any breaches of thresholds being flagged online. The outcomes of the trial showed 23 patients (49%) had no emergency admissions at all compared to the previous year, and a 75% reduction in admissions across all patients involved. In addition, there was a 40% saving in nurse time and positive feedback from residents and their families.

staff and care home facilities whilst raising client satisfaction.

In undertaking this work with care home providers, SEHTA has become more acutely aware that many of the opportunities for technology solutions apply in other care settings. As well as working with care home managers to explore technology solutions for care challenges to drive efficiency and effectiveness, SEHTA will be investigating further opportunities to transfer this learning and experience to other care settings, including domiciliary care.

To download your copy of The Technology and Innovation in Care Homes: The SEHTA Review please visit www.sehta.co.uk/tich or contact us at TICH@sehta.co.uk

www.sehta.co.uk

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

World’s first national tissue bank for pancreatic cancer research Professor Hemant Kocher, a pancreatic cancer researcher at Barts Cancer Institute, QMUL, and consultant pancreas and liver surgeon at The Royal London hospital has driven the development of the Tissue Bank.

He said: “This is a highly ambitious venture, but one that is crucial to enabling researchers to investigate new treatments for this most lethal cancer. Many proteins associated with pancreatic cancer are also found in blood, urine and saliva, so having these materials from patients alongside the tissue samples helps us to find ways to diagnose the disease at an earlier, curative stage.”

Around 8,800 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year. It’s known as the UK’s deadliest cancer, with a survival rate of just 3% - a figure that has barely improved in 40 years. Surgery to remove the tumour offers the best chance of survival, but most patients are diagnosed when the cancer has already spread to other organs. Without surgery, the average survival time from diagnosis is 6 months; new treatments are desperately needed.

The Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund Tissue Bank brings together surgeons, pathologists, oncologists, researchers and database experts to co-ordinate a national resource to help develop new treatments and bring these to patients faster. The Tissue Bank is being funded with £2 million from the UK research charity, Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF).

The six initial key NHS partners are: Barts Health NHS Trust, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust; ABM University Health Board in Swansea; University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

These partners will act as Tissue Bank collection centres, adding samples of tissue, blood, urine and saliva from around 1,000 new patients each year.

A new facility at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) will store tissue donated by consenting patients with diseases of the pancreas undergoing biopsy or surgery at partner hospitals in London, Southampton, Oxford, Leicester and Swansea.

Uniquely, the PCRF Tissue Bank will not only house samples of patients’ pancreatic tumours and other pancreatic diseases, but will also store blood, saliva and urine samples. Each donation will be logged with detailed medical and, where possible, genetic information so that researchers can request exactly the right type of sample for their research. Data generated by all research projects using Tissue Bank samples will be fed back into a bespoke database, and will be made freely available to the global research community, to inform and underpin their own research.

www.pcrf.org.uk/pages/tissue-bank

Maggie Blanks, Founder and CEO of Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund said: “Researchers told us that progress was being held back by the scarcity of highquality tissue samples on which they can test their ideas and validate their research.

For research results to be more meaningful, the samples must be collected, handled and stored consistently, following strict procedures. A nationally co-ordinated tissue bank will not only ensure that more samples become available to researchers, but that these are quality controlled to provide a much better basis for the very best research to be carried out.”

“In collaboration with Swansea University, we set up a research unit to undertake research into pancreatic disease and this has now been strengthened by joining with another four national centres to develop this national tissue bank. This provides a great opportunity to undertake research in this field and develop better understanding, new treatments and ultimately better outcomes for this group of patients.”

Bilal Al-Sarireh Consultant Hepato Pancreato Billiary Surgeon Morriston Hospital

Future watch

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Going global

Each year in the United States:

20,000

Mathematical diagnostics hits US market women diagnosed with ovarian cancer

Abcodia specialises in the early detection and screening of cancer. Founded in 2010, the company has developed capability in longitudinal blood profiling to identify changes that may lead to earlier detection of cancer.

The company’s first product is the Risk of Ovarian Cancer Algorithm (ROCA), co-invented by Professor Ian Jacobs, Co-founder of Abcodia, and Dr Steven Skates from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the US. The team is developing a pipeline of other early detection tests and has an on-going collaboration with Cancer Research UK to develop screening for up to four other cancers.

Against this backdrop, the company has secured financing from Scottish Equity Partners and Cambridge Innovation Capital, as well as existing investors, totalling £5.25m to commercialise the ROCA® Test in both the UK and US markets. The test was CE marked early in 2015 and the test launched in the UK in July.

Ovarian cancer illustration

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Each year in the 14,000 die from the disease United States:

45%

Just will survive for five years

20,000

women diagnosed with ovarian cancer

14,000

die from the disease

45%

Just will survive for five years

have cancer, the ROCA® test uses a woman’s own personal baseline and an advanced mathematical algorithm to monitor changes to this level over time to accurately predict whether a woman has ovarian cancer.

The United Kingdom Collaborative Trial for Ovarian Cancer Screening is the world’s largest ovarian cancer screening trial, involving over 200,000 women from the UK. During this trial, the ROCA® Test has proven to be able to detect almost 86% of ovarian cancers, whilst

United States is the single largest market for the ROCA® Test. Potential market in excess of $1 billion annually.

equally importantly, accurately ruling out cancer with a 99.8% accuracy. For each cancer found there were just four women who had a benign condition. This level of performance exceeds all the targets for a successful ovarian cancer screening product.

United States is the single largest market for the Each in the United States, over ® ROCA Test.year Potential market in excess women are diagnosed with of $120,000 billion annually. ovarian cancer and over 14,000 will die from the disease; just 45% will survive for five years. With over fifty-two million women aged over fifty and the Unlike with breast cancer, there are no acceptance of private healthcare, the approved biomarkers for ovarian cancer.

United States is the single largest market The symptoms are vague, with no easy for the ROCA® Test. Estimations suggest way to diagnose the disease without a total potential market in excess of $1 risky surgery. Consequently, the cancer is billion annually. In its ambitious plans for diagnosed once it has spread beyond the the US, the company has established its ovaries; by this point, treatment options US headquarters in Boston and is now are limited. focussed on expanding its team with the Despite repeated attempts to find new recruitment of commercially experienced biomarkers, there is still no approved staff and non-executives. The ROCA® test for ovarian cancer screening. With Test will be run from Abcodia’s own the launch of their new test, Abcodia certified laboratory and offered across all aims to change this. Unlike most tests, fifty US states by the end of 2016. which have a set threshold level above which a person would be deemed to www.therocatest.co.uk

Going global

Arab Health opens up new markets The annual Arab Health exhibition has once again cemented its place as a must-attend event in the healthcare calendar, with its biggest show in its 41 year history.

The 2016 show, held in late January at the Dubai International Convention & Exhibition Centre, played host to more than 4,000 companies from 163 countries who exhibited their latest innovations to more than 130,000 healthcare professionals over four days.

Established in 1975 as a small trade show under canvas on a patch of land in Dubai, Arab Health is now recognised as one of the most important global events in the healthcare calendar and is the second largest healthcare exhibition and congress in the world. The annual exhibition is now firmly established as offering important opportunities to build relationships within the healthcare industry, to showcase progress and achievement in the sector, and to explore new opportunities with stakeholders in the healthcare field.

A total of 30 companies including Drive Medical, TensCare, BioClad and Sidhil were supported at the event by Medilink Yorkshire & Humber’s International and PR teams, offering sector-leading guidance on exhibiting effectively and efficiently at the show while

gaining maximum exposure to visitors.

Highlights of the 2016 exhibition included welcoming distinguished guests including The Minister of State for Community & Social Care Alistair Burt and Lord Kakkar to the stands of the Yorkshire and Humber companies, as well as the excellent new business opportunities created.

2016 was the sixth time Sidhil has exhibited at Arab Health, and the company’s presence has increased year on year, both in terms of stand space and range of products presented. This year, the displays focused on Sidhil’s innovative Monitor, Alert, Protect (M.A.P) system, a continuous bedside pressure monitoring facility providing a real time visual ‘pressure map’, giving care staff accurate detail on each individual patient.

In addition, the Sidhil stand featured the Innov8 iQ and Innov8 Low beds, as well as the Artemis fully automatic dynamic mattress, accommodating very high risk patients up to and including Grade IV pressure ulcers. It was innovative products such as these that attracted visitors to the stand from welcomed visitors from Asia, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The Medilink Yorkshire and Humber International Team has been attending Arab Health for many years and is happy to talk to companies who are interested in the event to offer advice, guidance and suggestions on steps forward.

“Export now provides an increasingly important avenue for growth for Sidhil, and we been investing in a presence at overseas trade shows for some time, building up significant export business across the Middle East for which Arab Health continues to provide a valuable shop window for our range of healthcare products.

We always make best use of time at the exhibition to meet up with our existing, long established distributors in the market, covering future plans and emerging opportunities. It was an excellent show for us, with 75 new, good quality leads from countries including Africa, Iran, India and Pakistan, and we are already planning to participate again in 2017.”

Kim Robinson Marketing Manager Sidhil

www.medilinkuk.com www.sidhil.com

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Dubai unveiling for carbon fibre wheelchair A Scottish business recently demonstrated a revolutionary new wheelchair at Arab Health in Dubai that it hopes will drive its exports in a key international health market.

Nairn-based Carbon Black Systems exhibited the eponymous Carbon Black chair – made almost entirely of carbon fibre, the lightweight material that shaves seconds from motor racing star Lewis Hamilton’s lap times – at Arab Health, the Middle East’s biggest healthcare expo.

The business, which employs seven at its headquarters in Nairn and nine at its manufacturing base and showroom in Bicester, Oxfordshire, has financial backing from Highland Venture Capital and Scottish Enterprise.

Three times the strength of steel, Carbon Black’s fibre is moulded into an ergonomically designed form that is stylish, lightweight and minimalist in appearance. The chair has a compact, rigid frame that is lightweight and dismantles in seconds into easy to transport parts, none heavier than 3.5kg.

The wheelchairs are bespoke creations for customers, so each wheelchair can be custom-built to the users’ requirements, style and colour as well as other enhancements, including LED lighting so that hidden kerbs and other obstacles are visible to users at night.

The aesthetic form of Carbon Black is the result of a chair built to make life as a wheelchair user easier. The ease of use principles in the design were then combined with the engineering requirements of carbon fibre. The result is a beautiful monocoque based design

that can be built to bespoke measurements and accessorised with a range of unique options.

The group’s engineers also make carbon fibre components for the leading F1 racing teams, and say that the carbon fibre for the wheelchair is a smooth material that won’t hurt the user’s hands, leave black marks around their home or scratch their car, and absorbs bumps for a smoother ride.

“The Middle East is an interesting and unique market – a juxtaposition of the conservative and the innovative.

Arab Health 2016 is the largest convergence of technologies in healthcare in the region so a great place to showcase the wheelchair.

The world is our market and whilst we continue to be focused on our UK business, we can clearly see great opportunities that exist for our products in the large export markets.”

Steve Ryan Group Managing Director Carbon Black Systems

Steve remarked that the business saw the Carbon Black chair not just as a mobility and independence aide, but as a product that can change the wider public’s perception of wheelchairs and their users. He added that in international markets there was an increasing appetite for innovation with healthcare. He said the group’s wider vision was to offer enhanced mobility and help change the everyday perception of chair users across the globe by tapping into new markets.

www.carbonblacksystem.com

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Going global

Randox Laboratories improving lives around the globe For over 30 years, Randox Laboratories has developed diagnostic products and services for customers in more than 145 countries worldwide.

With 1,300 personnel, Randox manufactures in the region of 3.5 billion assays per year, which could provide a standard diagnostic profile on 5% of the world’s population. The company’s range of assays include classic capabilities in lipid, kidney and liver profiles, comprehensive QC and EQA programs, highly innovative multiplex arrays for conditions such as cardiovascular risk, FH, stroke, respiratory disease and STIs. The multiplex assays can screen for over 500 compounds and can be used for niche markets including food safety (drug residue) and toxicology.

Recently, the company unveiled its latest infrastructure and investment plan; a £161 million futuristic manufacturing and R&D facility at its headquarters in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Known as Randox Science Park, this will become the company’s prime manufacturing site, complementary to its manufacturing operations in the Republic of Ireland,

our commitment to R&D very seriously – we must innovate if we are to exploit the explosion of new knowledge that becomes available to us – to the benefit of mankind. Hence our commitment to high quality multiplexing arrays, which are highly adaptable with both proteomic and genomic capabilities.

At Randox, our vision is revolutionising

India and the USA. It will lead to the creation of 540 jobs over the next four years and a similar number of jobs will be created over the same period through the expansion of Randox Teoranta, the company’s operation in Ireland.

healthcare through improving diagnostics and we look forward to exciting times ahead.”

Founded in 1982 by Peter FitzGerald CBE in an out-building at the back of his parents’ home, Randox has grown over three decades to be one of the most innovative diagnostics companies in the world, routinely returning around 16% of turnover to R&D. The 300 staff committed to life sciences and engineering innovation currently have over 400 new assays under development.

Randox has invested over a decade of research, and around $300million into a patented BioChip Array Technology, which has the ability to undertake multiple tests simultaneously in order to make rapid and comprehensive diagnoses in the most efficient and timely manner for the patient.

Dr Peter FitzGerald, Managing Director of Randox Laboratories explains the key to the company’s success: “We firmly believe that diagnostics are key to improving healthcare systems around the world. More sensitive, accurate and comprehensive diagnostics will enable greater preventative care - improving patient outcomes and reducing the burden on healthcare services. We take

Not content with focusing upon laboratory professionals, Randox has recently launched two new direct to consumer operations. Randox Health exploits the company’s expanding diagnostic portfolio by providing the complete range of assays, with full analysis and clinical assessment, directly to the public from a number of bespoke clinics. These comprehensive screening programmes are at the cutting edge of preventative care.

www.randox.com

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The value of Horizon 2020 funding to SME innovation In his article for Issue 10 of UK Lifescience Industry magazine, Gwyn Tudor, CEO of MediWales, lays out the facts and figures behind Europe’s life science industry. He suggests there is much for those in the industry to consider in the run-up to the EU referendum on 23 June, not least the future of public-private financed pan-European partnerships which bridge the funding gap in the commercialisation of research. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that programmes such as the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument are a vital catalyst for med tech, drug development and biotech innovation. Here, Matt Symonds, Director of TBAT Innovation explores how to make a strong case for your medical technology project in Horizon 2020.

What is the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument?

A single SME company, or SME lead in a collaboration, with a product, process or system ready for demonstration and market exploitation (Technology Readiness Level 6 or above), can apply for significant levels of H2020 project funding up to £1.8 million.

Although competition is extremely high, a successful bid is a strong

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indication that the innovation will fly and be of interest to investors.

The programme is not for startups, but for SMEs who’s R&D has been proven to work and even exploited in a different application.

In the medical and heath technology sectors, the SME Instrument topics cover ‘Boosting Biotechnology-based Industrial Processes’ and ‘Validation of Biomarkers and/or Medical Devices.’

What makes a good Horizon 2020 application?

Assuming your project addresses one of the funding topics, the application must then explain the innovation and how it meets new needs. Evidence of technical risk and global commercial opportunity must be explained alongside a realistic assessment that you can deliver the project. Don’t underestimate the cost of the project.

If you are able to quantify business growth and continued commitment to future research and associated investment, your bid has a strong chance of success.

TBAT has worked with a wide variety of SME clients operating in the medical technology sector across the UK and projects can vary enormously. They

include new designs for surgical instruments and tools, resuscitation and emergency responder equipment, diagnostic assays, pressure-relieving mattresses, implantable medical devices, remote patient monitoring systems and software, and novel pharmacological agents. TBAT ensures that the project fits the requirements of the Horizon 2020 application and that the client projects meet all relevant regulatory standards required throughout development and commercialisation.

What next?

Applying for such high levels of European funding can be complex and time consuming, and you need to be prepared for the level of monitoring paperwork too. However, sound project management together with planning time to get your partners and subcontractors in place will significantly help your chances of success. Once submitted and successful your company will go through a due diligence process, and whatever the outcome there will be feedback and application scores which will help address any points in future applications.

www.tbat.co.uk

Routes to market for natural compounds The Natural Compounds Special Interest Group aims to support development of natural products for health, wellbeing and disease management.

As a forum it will be used to discuss new developments in the sector, provide opportunities to share advice on clinical trials, develop routes to market and ensure that findings from research environments develop into products.

Launch event

Farmer to pharma: commercialisation of natural products

27th April 2016 Cardiff Contact

isabelle.perkins@mediwales.com to register your attendance

For further information please contact Heather Graz

01495 292 700

@

heathergraz@neembiotech.com

NATURAL COMPOUNDS S P E C I A L

I N T E R E S T

G R O U P

We innovate healthcare At Roche our aim is to improve the health, quality of life and well-being of people around the world by providing an innovative range of diagnostic solutions and medicines. Roche is a global, research-focused healthcare company with Group Headquarters in Basel, Switzerland.

Our strategy is clear - the patient lies at the heart of everything we do and our focus is fitting the treatment to the patient through prescription pharmaceuticals and in-vitro diagnostics.

What makes Roche distinctive is our pursuit of excellence in science as we deliver the best solutions for healthcare professionals and improve patient outcomes; this is achieved through our unique combination of Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics.

Everyday, our products help patients and the healthcare professionals who care for them by detecting, preventing, diagnosing, treating and monitoring diseases.

We are proud to have played a pioneering role in UK healthcare since 1908.

Today, we are the leading in-vitro diagnostics company in the UK and the leading provider of pharmaceutical treatments for cancer and viral diseases.

We are also a major supplier of medicines for the treatment of transplantation, virology, bone and rheumatology and renal anaemia. In total, our UK pharmaceutical and diagnostics businesses employ nearly 2,000 people.

Personalised Healthcare We combine our strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics to better fit treatments to patients. When genetic differences can be identified, the efficacy and safety of medicines can be improved enormously. To this end we have a companion diagnostic strategy for every molecule we develop.

Diagnostics As the UK leader in diagnostics solutions, we offer a uniquely broad and innovative portfolio of products to patients, physicians, researchers, hospitals, laboratories and universities.

Our UK Diagnostics business, headquartered in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, employs approximately 500 highly skilled individuals.

Diagnostics is set to play an increasingly important role in the future of healthcare as genetic knowledge presents new and exciting opportunities. Our desire is to provide clinicians and patients with Actionable Health Information - information that reduces the uncertainty in the medical decision making process, enabling them to choose between available alternatives to prevent or treat disease.

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Tel: +44 (0)1444 256000 www.roche.co.uk At Roche we focus on developing medicines and diagnostics that will help patients live longer, better lives

Made in the UK

Device for rapid detection of heart conditions Quantum Vitalscan is an innovative portable medical device that can scan a patient presenting chest pain in less than 5 minutes, helping doctors to rule out acute cardiac conditions such as a heart attack or other serious heart problems.

The product can be used in hospital A&E departments and at patients’ bedsides, placing it at the front-line of medical care.

It produces highly accurate 2D imaging maps of the heart, enabling healthcare professionals to confidently identify non-cardiac patients early in the triage process without waiting for inconclusive lab results.

This process could cut patients’ waiting time to a matter of minutes and free up valuable hospital resources. The device can be used with very little additional training to that needed to perform a routine ECG and supports existing diagnostic tools to give an accurate and complete picture of a patient’s cardiac health.

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Originally developed with the University of Leeds, the technology was created in response to an urgent clinical need to save time and money in A&E by more efficiently triaging patients with chest pain. Quantum Imaging Ltd was established to further the evolution of this device that can save time, cost and lives, and bring it to realisation for the benefit of hospitals, healthcare professionals and patients alike.

The company has recently announced completion of a new £4.6m investment with participation from all existing and new investors to drive product commercialisation and allow for further development of the unique imaging technology.

Steve Parker, CEO of Quantum Imaging said: “The timing and size of this investment is important to the company as it allows us to fully commit to an aggressive product and platform development and clinical research strategy whilst building a high quality team and facilities.”

Simon Graindorge, Director of Healthcare at IP Group commented: “IP Group has been involved with Quantum Imaging from the very beginning and we have

been delighted with the progress achieved to date and the exciting early clinical results that this world-class science is demonstrating.”

The company hopes to revolutionise cardiology and the way abnormalities are detected. Formal clinical trials of 1,000 patients across five hospitals in the UK and US are due to take place this summer, providing preliminary findings by October 2016.

In the future, the technology will undergo further research and development and could be applied to other fields of medicine to accurately rule out other conditions.

www.quantumimaging.eu

Made in the UK

Wireless body sensors monitor patients’ vital signs With hospitals now busier than ever, the demands for improved and more efficient patient monitoring have also increased. The number of patients per nurse continues to grow and healthcare organisations globally need to focus on improving efficiency and utilisation of resources in order to maintain a high level of service.

Effective use of digital and ICT technologies, together with the process improvements enabled by these technologies are key ways to tackle the increasing challenges facing healthcare providers. Among these are devices for directly digitising the patient to provide continuous and real-time physiological and associated data, and wireless technologies that provide accurate monitoring.

Isansys Lifecare Ltd has taken these latest technologies and reworked them to create a new medical system, which allows a child or adult to be monitored wirelessly and continuously in real-time, ensuring deterioration is identified more quickly and timely treatment is given. The system, called the Patient Status Engine (PSE), uses wireless body-worn sensors to collect and analyse heart rate plus variability, respiration rate, temperature, oxygen saturation and blood pressure as required. This allows doctors and nurses to monitor patients more closely, efficiently and continuously.

“Continuous, real-time monitoring has an important role to play in a patient-focused healthcare system. At Isansys, we have developed the PSE to provide clinicians with robust, accurate and relevant data which will give them new insights into their patients’ health, provide them with timely early warning indicators both in hospital and at home, and enable them to spend more time caring for their patients.”

Keith Errey CEO Isansys

Isansys launched the product in 2013, and introduced a second generation platform in November 2015. The system’s hardware comprises wireless body-worn sensors, including the Isansys Lifetouch, which provides continuous heart rate, respiration rate, heart rate variability, and on-demand ECG, and the Isansys Lifetemp, which measures continuous body temperature.

The PSE currently uses third-party devices to collect data on oxygen saturation, PPG and blood pressure.

The data collected from the sensors is transmitted via Bluetooth to a device called the Patient Gateway, which also acts as a data entry interface for the healthcare provider or the patient. The Lifeguard Server is the PSE’s back-end IT system that collects the data from multiple Patient Gateways installed in and outside of hospitals, and then delivers the data directly to the care teams or to the patient on any browser enabled device, including smart phones and tablets.

Isansys is currently working with a number of health organisations in the UK and globally to help provide better care for

patients in hospital and those recovering at home. One study with the Royal Free Hospital, London, demonstrated the PSE’s ability to replace lab-based tests with a new score calculated from the data captured by the Lifetouch. This newly developed data-driven biomarker provides real-time information on the level of deterioration of patients with advanced liver disease.

In another study, with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, Isansys is working with the clinical team to use data from the PSE to develop an early warning score for patients who have undergone chemotherapy and are at high risk of sepsis. This ensures a more accurate prediction of a patient’s deterioration, which is expected to lead to faster and more targeted responses that can save lives and shorten hospital stays.

The company sees this technology as the future of patient monitoring and digital transfer of information, which can be used for a range of analytical techniques and methods to understand much more about diseases and human physiology.

www.isansys.com

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Digital Health quarter for Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator Tech or digital start-up businesses are being encouraged to accelerate their growth by applying to Innovation Birmingham’s Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator programme.

Academic Health Science Network collaborating in the Digital Health quarter.

The other partners include Centro and the Transport Systems Catapult, RWE npower and Barclays.

The application process has been launched as the Serendip® Incubator’s new home at the £8 million iCentrum® building rapidly nears completion. The Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator will cover almost 12,000 square feet on the first floor of the building and will co-locate promising start-up businesses with large commercial partners.

Within these challenge-led incubators, the commercial partners will help to mentor qualifying early stage tech companies and may, in turn, become customers or distribution channels for the start-ups.

The ethos behind the space is to harness the power of serendipity, stimulate collaborative working across the four sectors and encourage the translation of ideas, relevant to the Smart City agenda, into new products and services.

There will be at least four sector-specific Serendip® ‘quarters’: Digital Heath, Intelligent Mobility, Internet of Things and an additional incubator. These will be delivered by Innovation Birmingham in collaboration with key partners, with the West Midlands

Successful applicants for the Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator will be supported

by Innovation Birmingham’s mentorship programmes, enabling them to work directly with commercial partners to market-test and refine products and services. These businesses will also benefit from free high-tech office space, mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs, a 180-seat presentation auditorium and access to more than 100 evening networking events and workshops. The Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator is open to UK wide start-ups, but they will need to relocate to the iCentrum building in the West Midlands in order to be supported by the corporate partners.

“With access to all the innovation challenges that healthcare practitioners and managers identify, start-ups will be able to market-test their product or service and gain access to big data and exclusive insight into innovation in the healthcare industry. The West Midlands Academic Health Science Network will be a fantastic asset to our Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator and we look forward to collaborating with them to deliver our common mission of encouraging innovation across the region by linking the digital expertise in the region to personal healthcare needs and healthy living interests.”

Dr David Hardman MBE CEO Innovation Birmingham

Dr Christopher Parker, Managing Director of the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network, said: “We are very excited to be the corporate partner in the Digital Health quarter of the Serendip® Smart Cities Incubator. As an AHSN, we seek out digital innovations that have the potential to improve the health of the population and create wealth within the region, and it is our ambition to make the West Midlands the UK’s first truly digital health economy.

“However, while many industries have embraced digital working, healthcare has yet to fully capitalise on these opportunities. Furthermore, the most important challenge facing start-ups is proving that there is a market for their product or service. We will be working closely with the successful start-up companies from day one to maximise their chance of success, supporting them to develop products for which there is a real demand and need from the healthcare sector. This will help the start-ups unlock investment, create the best version of the product and ultimately, bring that product to market for the benefit of patients.”

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www.wmahsn.org

Made in the UK

SureScreen – Application of Innovation In 2015, the UK had a podium place in the Global Innovation Index, finishing 2nd to Switzerland. Organisations such as Rolls-Royce, Arm Holdings and Reckitt Benckiser continue to grab the headlines, but much of the UK’s innovation happens in the diverse range of SMEs throughout the country.

SureScreen, based in Derby, utilises its innovative nature to create a range of products and services that bring rapid screening from the laboratory to the bench. In the late 1990s, SureScreen Diagnostics was the first company to introduce rapid immuno-assay drug tests into the UK. With rapid testing came huge increases in efficiencies relating to time and cost, allowing more screening to take place to deter and monitor drug abuse.

Before rapid tests, all samples were sent back to a laboratory for analysis.

Today, customers all over the UK make use of these products, from companies with safety critical environments, such as manufacturing, shipping and haulage firms, to the GPs surgery, NHS and supermarkets. Committed to using expertise in developing cutting edge technologies for new challenges in diagnostics, the company finds solutions using a logical and scientific approach.

The team at SureScreen work with health professionals to research nutrition and the role of diet in assisting recovery from illness. After studying some supplements, it was found that off-the-shelf tablet products typically yield just 7% - 10% of their active ingredient due to breakdown on exposure to gastric acid, and the inability of the body to sufficiently absorb the nutritional value.

Vitamin C is one of the primary nutrients, as it neutralises cell-aging free radicals, and helps reduce inflammation – an effect of many conditions from the common cold to cancer. Vitamin C is also the highest seller in the nutrition market.

Using this information, SureScreen created a solution by treating the raw vitamin C on a nano-scale, a process known as ‘liposoming’. Enclosing the vitamin C in a phospholipid, which is

hydrophobic, meant that it became water insoluble. This enabled the vitamin to pass through the hostile environment of the stomach to the gut where nutrients are absorbed.

The body has an amazing way of directing such things as vitamin C to the correct place, and this process sign-posts the phospholipid towards the site of inflammation. Phospholipids are used in the building of new cells, and therefore the body will strip down the protecting layer, delivering the nano-sized vitamin C in perfect condition straight into the cell where it can maximise its impact. The yield for Liposomal Vitamin C is well over 90% - perfect for general health and the treatment of specific conditions.

SureScreen has become adept in applying its skills in identifying traces of various markers in a variety of mediums, whether drug metabolites in oral fluid and urine, markers for health conditions in blood and urine, or a rogue metallic element in the make-up of a material.

With quality as a core value, the company strives for continuous improvement and aims to make a positive impact on people’s lives.

www.surescreen.com

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Funding for anti-biofilm breakthroughs

The 5D Health Protection Group has proficiency across a range of industry sectors, with specialist knowledge of the healthcare market and infection control.

The expert team has gained extensive skills and knowledge in medical device innovation, product development, R&D, antimicrobials, biofilms, biomaterials and education.

The company has recently been awarded a grant from Innovate UK to fund a project developing new, innovative, smart anti-biofilm technologies, which is being undertaken in collaboration with Professor John Hunt from the University of Liverpool.

Specifically, the researchers will explore the development of anti-biofilm technologies that can be incorporated into medical devices, such as those used in skin and wound care, catheters and other medical products where infection prevention and control innovations are urgently required.

With the ever-increasing concerns of healthcare-associated infections and the accompanying rise in costs to healthcare budgets, new anti-biofilm solutions are now a high priority.

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In conjunction with the growing concerns of antibiotic resistant bacteria, as highlighted by the Chief Medical Officer for England, Dame Sally Davies, the importance of biofilms also warrants a heightened visibility due to their reported association with 65% of all healthcare-

UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

associated infections and 80% of all known human infections.

The company’s next generation antibiofilm frameworks in development will provide numerous functions that current technologies fail to offer. Most antimicrobials that have been developed to date are specifically focused on killing microorganisms in the planktonic or freefloating state.

However, the next generation of antibiofilm technologies will look to prevent, disrupt and eradicate a biofilm, whilst treating the conditions they cause; which is the outcome 5D Health Protection Group is aiming for with the innovative technologies it is developing. Having

“Being awarded this prestigious Innovate UK grant will help 5D to significantly speed up the delivery of novel anti-biofilm innovations, which will have a major impact on reducing biofilm associated infections, a major burden to both patients and hospitals globally. The direct and indirect cost of biofilms to environmental health, public health and medicine presently runs into the tens of billions of pounds annually.�

Professor Steven Percival CEO 5D Health Protection Group

made significant progress, the team will be incorporating the anti-biofilm technologies into various medical devices within the next 6-12 months.

5D already has expertise in antimicrobial and biofilm testing, and has total license rights to a new anti-biofilm formulation, AsepticateTM, which can be incorporated into an array of different platforms for use in many different industrial and healthcare sectors. The anti-biofilm formulation can be used as an adjunct to antimicrobial agents and products, or utilised as a stand-alone anti-biofilm and antimicrobial technology.

5D also offers a testing service in microbiology, biofilms, biochemistry, biomaterials, clinical engineering, biologics and also offers a clinical trials service.

The company also offers a quality and regulatory auditing service to companies presently initiating or employing ISO 9001 and ISO 13485.

www.5dhpg.com www.liverpool.ac.uk

Where great minds think alike UK HealthTech Conference 2016 is a valuable day of brieďŹ ngs and networking for those within the life science and health technology communities, and research clinicians from the NHS. Over 300 delegates come together to understand critical strategic trends that will impact on their businesses. The event oers the latest insights from key opinion leaders and the unique opportunity to engage with industry colleagues to network and develop your business relationships.

CARDIFF 6 DECEMBER 2016 One Conference, Two Essential Streams BioPharma Development Medical Technology

Medtech Pharmadev For more information visit www.ukhealthtech.com or contact tess.coughlan-allen@mediwales.com, +44 (0)29 2047 3456

Delivered by

Meeting the unmet Clinical innovation booming for Wales NHS Thinking prudently gets you to a good place for clinical innovation. Thinking prudently makes you ask, how can we do things very well, but without wasting the important resources that must serve us? From all of this careful thought, there have been exciting developments in Wales, leading to a huge increase in clinical innovation. Industry, businesses, designers, Welsh Government support, and all sorts of NHS clinicians are working together to improve processes, products, devices and drugs for patients in Wales and the UK.

Working closely with Cardiff School of Art & Design, the Bill Mapleson Centre has extensive expertise in design, development and evaluation of medical devices using lab-based tests, user assessment and clinical trials. The drive behind the initiative is to increase collaboration between the NHS and industry to develop innovative solutions to clinical problems.

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It is easy to get involved, with initiatives and groups such as Swansea University’s ARCH, Cardiff University’s Clinical Innovation System and South East Wales’ SEWAHSP. Judith Hall, a Welsh Consultant Anaesthetist has developed a Clinical Innovation Wales series of events as part of the Bill Mapleson Centre, a medical innovation social enterprise run by clinical academics from Cardiff University’s School of Medicine.

Health Board and Sue Bale, Director of Research and Development in Aneurin Bevan Health Board.

Last year, the Bill Mapleson Centre ran five free Clinical Innovation Wales events, inviting delegates to come along with an idea to explore confidentially. Delegates were offered support from a range of experts, for those who needed a designer, a manufacturer, or someone to help with a grant or finance; there were specialists providing advice for free, helping each other to help patients.

The workshops involved collaborative thinking to develop new ideas and prudent solutions that can be taken forward.

Innovative concepts included improved trauma care, new training devices for doctors, a completely new way of giving anaesthesia and a way of diagnosing and treating septicemia in rural situations.

Professor Judith Hall, Bill Mapleson Centre said: “As a practicing doctor I want the best for my patients. I want quality care, just right for the needs of each and every patient. Wales has developed a prudent healthcare concept, and it’s a good one: the right care, no more, no less.”

At recent Bill Mapleson Centre meetings, delegates have heard from key Welsh opinion leaders, including Adam Cairns, NHS Innovation Champion for Wales & Chief Executive Cardiff & Vale University

The events also include group work.

Recently, supported by Cardiff University’s Phoenix project, teams were challenged to solve five African problems. The aim of the workshop was to take people out of their comfort zone to find solutions that can work in Africa, cost effectively, which could also be applied to Wales and the UK.

Andy Ware, Cardiff and Vale UHB said: “It’s a rare thing to have such a mix of people in one room, with sixth form students talking to lawyers and local business talking to senior clinicians. What inspired me most was that even with such a diverse group, there was a real feeling of inclusiveness and a real sense that things will be achieved within this growing team.”

www.blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/hallje

Meeting the unmet

Innovative interactive data exploration tools Combining the skills of statisticians, health economists and computer scientists, Digital Health Labs is passionate about accelerating data driven research in life sciences.

The company has extensive experience in pharmacoepidemiological and health economics research and has undertaken a number of projects with global pharmaceutical companies. This expertise is complemented by software development skills allowing Digital Health Labs to continually improve research efficiency and develop innovative research techniques. The company is also able incorporate research outputs into apps and software tools.

Created two years ago, Digital Health Labs is enjoying rapid growth. With Welsh Government support through the High Performance Startup scheme initially and now the Accelerated Growth Programme, the company has employed 5 new people in the last 12 months, with more planned.

The combination of health economics researchers, data scientists, talented engineers and its HealthIRIS platform allows the company to complete projects rigorously and efficiently producing robust results, and the team have expertise in Health Resource Utilisation, Budget Impact Modelling, Network Meta-analysis and Cost Effectiveness Modelling.

Digital Health Labs uses interactive data exploration tools to collaborate with clients during projects resulting in higher quality, reusable results. As well as traditional reports, slide decks and papers, the technology incorporates interactive dashboards allowing its clients to explore the results, gaining additional value from their research investment.

HealthIRIS, the secure web-based platform allows researchers and business users to collaboratively explore and analyse project and population health datasets. The system provides simple but powerful dashboards and visualisations for non-technical users as well as access to advanced industry-standard statistical modelling for researchers.

Metalyst platform. Through innovative collaboration features and integrated analysis tools, this online platform will accelerate meta-analysis of clinical trial results, creating valuable information on the relative effectiveness of therapies in development. This will allow global companies to make sound research decisions, ultimately leading to a more

The platform allows algorithms and knowledge created during research projects to be captured. This knowledge can be peer-reviewed, shared and reused within the platform leading to improved consistency and efficiency in future projects.

Speeding up the often time-consuming data cleansing stage for research projects, the system can also automate some of the analysis work. This means that a client can approach Digital Health Labs with a particular research question in mind, wanting a feasibility study done, before investing large budgets into a full-blown study. If the answer is satisfactory to their requirements, they can then start their study; if not, they can amend their criteria until they find a suitable study group.

The technology can provide answers in a matter of hours, combining access to various datasets with HealthIRIS technology. The same questions would usually take weeks to be answered using traditional methods only.

Digital Health Labs recently won the Dragon’s Den style competition at BioWales 2016 with their new

efficient product pipeline and effective treatments coming to market faster.

With the concept gathering a lot of interest, the company aims to raise the ÂŁ100k to bring this new project to life within the next 18 months. The team will also continue to develop their HealthIRIS platform to support their research work, and keep exploring new ways of making health economics research faster, easier and more accurate. This in turn will help patients around the world get access to better treatments, at reduced cost

www.digitalhealthlabs.com

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Moving forward with AGILE A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow Caledonian University and PAL Technologies Ltd is developing patientcentred training tools for use at home and in the community to improve walking abilities. The wireless-based technology will also offer cloud-based data management and visualisation to allow both the patient and their therapist to share on-going progress and goal attainment, thereby increasing the chances of a more successful rehabilitation.

Traditionally, the rehabilitation of those with reduced mobility as a result of stroke or amputation, which is a common complication of diabetes, has been challenging for patients and their support team of healthcare professionals. Current interventions designed to assist often prove difficult for patients to follow and, particularly if they also have other associated health problems, can lead to disenchantment with the process which results in failure to maintain the rehabilitation programme.

In contrast, new technology being developed by the AGILE (Ambulatory Guidance for Interactive Locomotion Enhancement) project team will fully and

personally engage the patient in their own rehabilitation throughout the entire process. The novel technology solution will enable real-time measurement and data analysis with direct feedback on progress being provided to both patient and healthcare professionals. An additional benefit of this more direct involvement in the rehabilitation programme by all parties is that any modifications or adjustments required to aid the patient in making a quicker and more effective recovery can be easily agreed upon and swiftly implemented.

There are approximately 50 thousand UK and 20 million US individuals currently living with amputation, mainly lower limb.

Nicholas Smith, based within PAL Technologies, was appointed to the key role of Software Engineer and KTP Associate, bringing significant technical expertise to the project team thanks to his background in programing, system design skills and in medical devices.

AGILE’s industrial partner, Glasgow based PAL Technologies, has a track record in providing clinical measurement tools for researchers worldwide who quantify physical behaviours (sitting, standing, stepping) and link sedentary behaviours with chronic disease risk. CEO Douglas Maxwell said: “Our current activPALTM devices are required to be worn for a period of time with data subsequently being downloaded and analysed but the device which the AGILE project team is developing will incorporate wireless technology and real time feedback.

Involvement in this project will allow us not only to offer an improved product to our existing core market of clinical researchers but also to build on the relationship we already have with a major prosthetic manufacturer, and engage more fully in the rehabilitation sector.”

“Delivering rehabilitation by measuring movement within controlled laboratory conditions is something which we have extensive experience of. However, a device which will provide real-time targeted feedback on the patient’s walking abilities outside the laboratory during their normal day-to-day life will be of immense assistance in motivating and encouraging the patient and will provide valuable information to their healthcare team.”

Dr Andrew Kerr Knowledge Based Supervisor Centre for Excellence for Rehabilitation Research (CERR) University of Strathclyde

AGILE’s academic partners contribute valuable sensors, orthotics and human movement expertise, as well as state-ofthe-art human performance laboratories.

www.paltechnologies.com

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

St Andrews develops fibre-optic healing light

Advances in photonics have stimulated significant progress in medicine, with many techniques now in routine clinical use. However, the finite depth of light penetration in tissue is a serious constraint to clinical utility.

A new technique which carries light further into human tissue than was previously possible has been developed by researchers from the University of St Andrews and the Harvard Medical School. The new ‘healing light’ could help to heal wounds faster as well as treat tumours more efficiently.

Through a process known as photochemical tissue bonding, light is applied to a wound to encourage it to heal quicker. Until now, this technique has been limited to treating only superficial wounds, but researchers from both Scottish and American universities attempted to develop a technology for tissue repair that could be used within the human body.

The international team of researches explored the use of implantable lightdelivery devices made of bio-derived or biocompatible, and biodegradable polymers. In contrast to conventional

“A variety of optical techniques, such as photochemical tissue bonding and photodynamic therapy, require efficient delivery of light deep into tissues, but the current limited penetration of light in tissue constitutes a serious constraint in clinical use. Having biocompatible and bioabsorbable optical components may transform photomedicine from a discipline where light is predominantly applied externally, to a new paradigm based on tissue-integrated and precisely controlled delivery and collection of light.”

Professor Malte Gather School of Physics and Astronomy University of St Andrews

optical fibres, which must be removed from the body soon after use, the biodegradable and biocompatible waveguides may be used for long-term light delivery and need not be removed as the tissue gradually resorbs them.

The results point to a new direction in photomedicine for using light in deep tissues.

Traditionally, fibre-optic devices or catheters have been fabricated from glass or plastic and remain in the body permanently or until removed through further surgical intervention.

However, the St Andrews-Harvard research team shows how fibres can be made from materials that will be resorbed into the body, eliminating the need for removal and the risk of damaging the newly-repaired tissue.

This advancement will give doctors the power to heal from within without scarring.

The research could also find application in a variety of other areas, such as longterm photodynamic therapy (PDT) for cancer treatment, as well as implanted endoscopy after surgery for repeated imaging and monitoring of the healing process.

www.st-andrews.ac.uk

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

Vacuderm makes cannulation safe and successful Olberon Ltd is a Nottingham-based company that specialises in medical device design, research, development and commercialisation. The company’s new product is Vacuderm, a tourniquet designed to aid vein inflation for cannulation.

A cannula is a small, flexible plastic tube that is inserted through the skin into a vein, which allows doctors or nurses to give medications, fluid and blood to a patient.

Intravenous (IV) cannulation is a technique in which a cannula is placed inside a vein to provide venous access. Venous access allows sampling of blood as well as administration of fluids, medications, parenteral nutrition, chemotherapy, and blood products.

Invented by Dr Arash Bakhtyari, the Vacuderm is designed to facilitate higher success in cannulation, significantly decrease patient discomfort and assist medical professionals to master their technique.

Currently, between 15-25% of first attempt cannulations performed in the traditional way fail.

It is a very ubiquitous medical practice and a sizeable proportion of times a healthcare professional will face difficulty. When there are poor veins, such as with chemotherapy patients, this can be even more problematic with higher failure rate.

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UK Lifescience Industry Magazine

A tourniquet is placed around the arm of a patient to help to make veins easier to see for a healthcare practitioner to attempt cannulation.

The Vacuderm tourniquet is designed to aid procedures by amplifying the effect of venous occlusion through a pumping mechanism, which can be used in difficult circumstances and for phlebotomy procedures.

The product can be used above or below the elbow for cannulation of the antecubital fossa, forearm, wrist and hand, and is designed to improve this venous success rate using a pumping mechanism that improves the filling of vein. The technology uses a vacuum pump that amplifies the tourniquet effect. With pumping, the vein will be inflated, more tense and turgid, and easier to cannulate, improving success rates.

Infection control is a recurrent issue in terms of reusing tourniquets. Any object, including a cannula, that punctures the skin has a risk of letting infection into the body. Vacuderm is a single use sterile product that is packaged individually, which will assist in reducing infections. The product helps save time for professionals and reduces pain and discomfort for the

patients, as well as reducing infection transmission from patient to patient.

Olberon has also developed a device for ENT diagnostics called Otorhinoscope, a patented dual purpose medical scope allowing the doctor to examine both the ear and the nose using a single device.

It incorporates a unique expandable speculum, which is disposable for infection control.

The company has further products in the pipeline for cannulation, phlebotomy, biopsy devices and potentially a device in laproscopy access area.

In the short term, the company aims to promote and appoint European and international distributors for its portfolio of differentiating aids for improving venous access success. For the future, Olberon is seeking corporate partners from the cannulation and laparoscopy trocar sectors for the development and licencing of its disruptive pipeline technology ‘Intelligent Cannula’ with patented auto retractable needle.

www.olberon.com

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