WINNERS! - Medilink Midlands

The best and brightest Life Sciences companies from across the Midlands were shortlisted for the Medilink Midlands Business Awards 2022. The awards ceremony took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in Nottingham, on Thursday 27 January.

CONGRATULATIONS to all our worthy winners! Please see the categories below to discover who they are!

START UP AWARD

Sponsored by the Medical Technologies Innovation Facility (MTIF) :

Awarded to a newly established business which demonstrates exceptional promise for the future

East Midlands WINNER

HEAL.med CIC

HEAL.med CIC (Health Education And Learning) is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company set up to deliver knowledge and education to support diabetes patients.

HEAL.med aims to ensure every child diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes has access to high quality and effective education through a Social Enterprise. This is delivered as Deapp, pronounced “Deep”, the Diabetes Education Application.

West Midlands WINNER

Neokare Nutrition

Neokare is an innovative company and first of its kind in Europe. It manufactures lifesaving product aimed at pre-term children. They have established a pharmaceutical grade facility to process, develop and test human milk products from a base of UK donors who are recruited in alignment with NICE CG93 guidelines. Their site has multiple HEPA-filtered ISO 7 Cleanrooms where all processing and packing occurs prior to being stored on our onsite -20 Deg Celsius Freezer. They also have our own onsite Chemical, R & D and microbial labs to conduct testing of the raw and finished products, prior to release.

Their range of 100% human milk derived products includes a powdered fortifier which is the first in the world.

EXPORT ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Sponsored by Morningside Pharmaceuticals Ltd :

Awarded to the company recognised for outstanding overseas trading performance

East Midlands WINNER

Surescreen Diagnostics Ltd

Since being founded in 1996, family firm SureScreen Diagnostics has been at the heart of innovation – creating unique alcohol testing devices in ambulances, urine tests for GPs surgeries and now the most accurate tests for Covid-19.

Their rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 were the first European ones to pass the validation process in the laboratory by Public Health England and have been exported to 53 countries and dependencies.So far 30 million have also been produced for the UK government.

West Midlands WINNER

POWERbreathe International

POWERbreathe is the manufacturer of a range of inspiratory muscle training devices. Inspiratory muscle training with POWERbreathe has been scientifically proven to strengthen your breathing muscles to help them cope with demands of breathing, whether due to physical exercise or illness. It is often dubbed as being like a ‘set of dumbbells for your lungs’. In 2021 POWERbreathe was recognized by the WHO as being beneficial for the recovery of Covid-19.

DELIVERING INNOVATION IN TO HEALTH AND CARE AWARD

Sponsored by the East Midlands and the West Midlands Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) :

Awarded to the organisation whose collaboration with the NHS will have the greatest impact on business performance and patient care

East Midlands WINNER

TUTUM Medical

TBG Solutions are an engineering company providing test capability on manufactured products to large corporate companies. They work in many different industries including Medical, Commercial, Aerospace and Marine, producing products to release to market. Our R&D department is self-funded and works in collaboration with prime customers for trials and analysis of results before going live to the market.

TUTUM Medical is a spin-out company from TBG Solutions, created as a result of this collaborative piece of work with Sheffield Children’s Hospital. TUTUM Medical focuses on partnering with NHS organisations to solve problems and improve patient care.

West Midlands WINNER

Innovation Factory

Innovation Factory is a Birmingham-based tech start-up company founded in 2017 that is dedicated to developing sound recognition algorithms for a wide range of industries such as safety, security, comfort and the healthcare sector. Their purpose is to drive the research of sound recognition algorithms for the purpose of enhancing security, self-reliance and cost-effective measures primarily in the automation and artificial intelligence field.

INNOVATION

Sponsored by TBAT Innovation :

For the company which has developed the most innovative technology, design or process which produces major improvements in business performance or end-user benefits

East Midlands WINNER

Residual Barrier Technology

RBT is a developer, formulator and manufacturer of innovative hygiene and infection control products. They have developed their products to be kinder to the environment and users than more traditional harsh disinfectants. Their products target microbial cell walls, rupturing their surface and killing the organisms inside.

In addition to supplying the medical and healthcare sectors with their CE marked medical devices, their products are utilized by a wide variety of industries including education, food manufacturing, domestic and agriculture.

Their surface and hand disinfectants are water based, developed in-house and then independently tested to be just as effective as traditional products.

West Midlands WINNER

HeartFlow

HeartFlow, the leader in revolutionizing precision heart care, uniquely combines human ingenuity with advanced

technology to enable physicians to precisely diagnose and optimise treatment for patients with suspected coronary artery disease.

ADVANCES IN DIGITAL HEALTHCARE AWARD

Awarded to the company who demonstrate how digital technologies were employed to enhance current service delivery or create new ways of delivering healthcare.

East Midlands WINNER

Spirit Digital

Spirit Health is a forward-looking healthcare organisation providing award-winning products and services that are underpinned by market-leading technology and a refreshing, unique approach to healthcare. CliniTouch Vie is Spirit’s multi-award-winning digital health platform, delivering effective remote patient monitoring, patient education and self-management. By combining clinically-validated question sets and vital sign readings, clinicians are able to monitor for signs of deterioration remotely and intervene whenever necessary. Their unique algorithms generate red/amber/green rated patient lists to help clinicians deliver the right care to the right patient at the right time.

West Midlands WINNER

Black Space Technology

Black Space Technology is a privately funded SME which specialises in scalable and future proofed mobile telemedicine and telehealth solutions. It is software focused; hardware agnostic and all its solutions are configurable to local service needs including language localisation. All its products have full medical accreditation, GPDR compliance and have ISO 9001, 13485 (medical software), IASME IoT Gold, NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit and Cyber Essential Plus accreditation. The solutions are currently used internationally by NGO’s and military units deployed on land, sea, and air.

PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN ACADEMIA & BUSINESS AWARD

Sponsored by ARISE Innovation Hubs – part of Anglia Ruskin University :

Awarded to the company that demonstrates how the collaboration/partnership has or will enhance current service delivery or create new ways of delivering healthcare

East Midlands WINNER

SurePulse Medical

SurePulse is a University of Nottingham spin-out. Our vision is to revolutionise neonatal vital signs monitoring, giving clinicians and healthcare providers the tools to provide optimal care for newborn babies. the University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering (UoN) provides electronic engineering expertise and guidance and regular meetings are held where the design, clinical user requirements and signal processing developments are all discussed.

West Midlands WINNER

Interactive Software

The University of Nottingham’s CV-19 Asymptomatic Testing Service was established in September 2020 to offer saliva based qPCR tests to the University’s staff and students. Regular testing of their staff and students not showing symptoms of the coronavirus offers reassurance, reduces onwards transmission of the virus, and helps to keep everyone safe and our campuses open. The Asymptomatic Testing Service reports its positive test results directly into the NHS Test and Trace system, removing the need for a confirmatory swab based PCR test.

ONE TO WATCH AWARD

This is the JUDGES AWARD :

awarded to a business that shows a great deal of potential

East Midlands WINNER

Blueskeye AI

Blueskeye AI builds objective, accessible, scalable, affordable solutions and products for monitoring wellbeing and mental health. Their core technology enables patients, the public and medical professionals to streamline the provision of care and services using accurate, objective diagnosis, insights and longitudinal monitoring of patients across the globe. They leverage state of the art face and voice sensing technology to provide compelling healthcare solutions.

East Midlands WINNER

Eureka Inventions

Eureka Inventions is a team of healthcare professionals with the mission of improving safety in childbirth and surgery by preventing surgical items being accidentally retained. They have been granted a patent for a cost-effective, transportable swab counter/swab docking device. Following a successful proof-of-concept usability testing, the initial prototype is now being developed by The Manufacturing Technology Centre.

East Midlands WINNER

Neurotherapeutics Solutions Ltd

Neurotherapeutics Ltd is a medtech company building on research into Tourette syndrome that began in 2005. Studies included the use of multi-modal brain imaging and brain stimulation to investigate brain network function in Tourette syndrome, including how alterations in brain structure, function, and chemistry might be responsible for the remission of tics in Tourette syndrome. A research paper and positive clinical results led to the formal establishment of the company in January 2021.

West Midlands WINNER

Senior Home Solutions Ltd

Senior Home Solutions has a clear and simple mission: “Catch them before they fall”. Through innovation they have invented a handrail called “Grab A Rail ™” . The simple, but effective solution can be retro fitted, cost effectively and at speed to new and existing rooms, helping to prevent falls in the most dangerous place in the home: ‘The Kitchen.’

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Sponsored by Mills & Reeve :

Awarded to a company whose achievements have had a significant or vital impact on both the company and the sector as a whole

East Midlands WINNER

Spirit Health Group

Spirit businesses have saved the NHS millions of pounds and improved the lives of thousands of patients. Whether it’s their medicines optimisation programmes, high-quality primary care provision, market-leading digital health services or healthcare pathway services, you can rely on Spirit to deliver, brilliantly.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spirit rapidly re-aligned their remote monitoring platform to provide continuity of care for over 1,000 patients. Spirit adapted and quickly deployed CliniTouch Vie to enable patients to isolate safely, whilst still receiving brilliant, safe and responsive care. Spirit not only provided a remote monitoring solution to serve clinician and patient needs during the height of a pandemic, but also offered a full-service implementation, including training and support, to ensure it was used effectively and to take the burden off NHS teams

West Midlands WINNER

Kimal

Kimal manufactures over 2 million procedure packs and vascular access devices every year for a range of specialities including: cardiology, radiology, pacing, laparoscopy, and cardiac surgery; and their unique, ground-breaking central venous catheter technology is helping to reduce patient risk in hospitals across the world. With a desire to provide support during the pandemic and ensure the company would survive to support its employees, partners and customers, Kimal made some bold decisions. The NHS was struggling for beds to treat patients and decided to build resource in the form of the Nightingale hospitals and to run efficiently there was a massive requirement for critical care products.

Kimal and its employees stepped up to the plate to support one of the oldest institutes in the country, the NHS. Kimal dedicated its catheter manufacturing facility to solely produce products for the NHS, it also ramped up production in its Bromsgrove facility to make procedure packs specifically for the Nightingale hospitals.