The East Midlands Digital Health Accelerator is designed to help companies with the adoption and spread of their digital technologies and innovations within the health and care sector. These companies have real potential to make a positive impact on our NHS.

As part of our programme members receive a tailored package of bespoke support and expert guidance. Support is adapted to the needs of the company depending on what stage they are at and includes one to one support, coaching, and masterclasses.

We are now half way through the programme for this year, in this blog Nick Hamilton who leads the EMDHA reflects on the programme highlights so far.

Building the new EMDHA programme from the ground up has been both exciting and slightly daunting! Last year we decided to enhance our offer to innovators by aligning it with the priorities of our Integrated Care Systems across the region along with other regional bodies such as the NIHR Local Clinical Research Network and NHS Digital. Our partners across the region responded enthusiastically and almost all actively participated in the selection of our 2022 cohort.

I feel that the programme that we have developed this year offers considerable value to digital innovators and includes an array of assets and resources we have pulled in to support the programme. This energy and excitement have been mirrored by the unprecedented interest we had from innovators during the call for applications late last year and, in the diverse cohort of six companies we have now taken on to the programme.

The companies include:

Islacare - enables remote monitoring and management of patients with their visual care record which supports cross-organisational secure sharing of patient data, images and videos. The technology is adaptable to numerous clinical settings, particularly services with a high degree of multi-disciplinary team working across care sectors and organisations e.g. stroke rehabilitation.

TCC Casemix -  uses AI technology to simulate demand and capacity based on procedural data to optimise elective surgical pathways, enabling providers to plan and manage their resources and address treatment backlogs as efficiently as possible.

Kids Speech Labs -  helps parents to identify and support their children’s speech and language therapy needs whilst waiting for and during face-to-face therapy, streamlining the assessment of children by therapeutic services and, in some cases, enabling the early discharge of patients without face-to-face treatment. There are also clear linkages between learning disorder and autism services, an NHS priority, which the company are currently developing an approach to supporting.

Segmentum -  developed technology to improve the male fertility diagnostic pathway by augmenting the process of sperm counting and measurement with evidence-based quantitative assessment. This innovation could prove transformative in better targeting the use of complex and often costly fertility treatments by more accurately identifying male fertility problems early in the pathway.

iEthico -  a novel approach to mitigate the increasing problem of medicine shortages. Their digital platform brokers connections between NHS pharmacies with shortages and MHRA-accredited medicines suppliers globally with stock to meet their needs, ensuring the optimal sourcing and distribution of existing supplies.

Volmo – applies AI to automatically segment and analyse x-ray images for the presence of osteoarthritis, speeding the diagnostic process and freeing up radiologists’ time to focus on more complex cases, helping to address backlogs in diagnostic image processing which affect many clinical pathways.         

Expert support and guidance

We kicked-off our group activities early in the year with a three-day pre-accelerator course delivered by our partners at We Are Pioneer Group. This has an intensive focus on some of the fundamental concepts we will use as a foundation for the EMDHA programme such as the value proposition, customer segmentation and research and securing investment to sustain product development. The masterclass element of the programme commenced in April and will give our innovators a series of workshops delivered by subject matter experts that are bespoke and critical to digital healthcare innovation. I am delighted to be bringing the considerable expertise of Ethos, ORCHA and Mills & Reeve –  I am also excited to bring even more expert support to the programme over the summer – watch this space!  

We have also had some excellent feedback from the cohort on the self-guided learning element of the programme; the EMAHSN Innovation Academy. This is free and open access to all (via a simple sign-up). The Innovation Academy covers a series of modules for those who want to gain a better understanding of how the NHS takes forward new products and services I would encourage anyone reading to check it out.  

I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know our new innovators individually and have been working to develop my understanding of their value propositions to the health and care system. I am looking forward to building on these foundations and helping them to accelerate their development, growth and the realisation of the benefits their innovations offer to the health and care system.

For more information on the EMDHA check out our webpage.