Collaboration is the beating heart of South East's healthtech industry

Technology and health are not always the easiest of bedfellows with several hurdles to be overcome before the two can successfully come together to provide patient and economic benefit.

This friction between the two, created by innovation and risk, can be addressed through collaboration with a number of successful models of university and industry co-operation existing across the region.

Oxford Healthtech Labs and the Portsmouth-based Supporting Innovation and Growth in Healthcare Technologies (SIGHT) programme provide examples of successful collaboration in action with each having a different approach when it comes to acting as a bridge for private enterprise and healthcare.

Oxford Healthtech Labs was founded to build on the University of Oxford's strong reputation for healthcare and technology with a focus on embedding teams from a range of academic disciplines within healthcare settings.

The SIGHT programme, which strives to engage SMEs with healthcare system, is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and is a collaboration between the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust and the Wessex Clinical Research Network.

The £1.7m programme is part-funded by the European Regional Development (ERDF) Fund ends in mid-2023. The University and the NHS Trust are not only continuing the programme but aim to extend it to offer support previously excluded by ERFD restrictions.

The UK healthtech industry is growing at a rapid pace. In 2022, it is worth $20bn to the UK economy, with the sector expected to be worth $25bn in 2027.

Around 23 per cent of the industry is based in the south of England, which equates to close to 600 companies.

Professor Jeroen Bergmann, Director of Oxford Healthtech Labs, works with healthtech companies of all sizes and explains how his organisation helps to de-risk healthtech products and propositions.

"We put a team together and immerse them within a healthcare setting and let them find and observe problems that may normally get overlooked, he said.

"The team is multidisciplinary and could be made up of engineers, clinicians, mathematicians and business people who will go in and observe what the problems and needs are.

"Once these have been identified, they then rank the needs based on what is the commercial potential of that need and what the market size is.

"It is a needs-led innovation approach that creates a better market fit and asks if the right problem is being focused on or if there is an underlying problem at play."

Dr David Lubega, Research and Innovation Collaborations Manager at the University of Portsmouth supports the SIGHT programme. He said that his organisation opens doors for technology companies looking to move into the healthtech sector.

He said: "It allows the healthcare sector to access ground-breaking technologies and helps companies become more aware of the challenges around product development in a healthcare setting.

"A lot of companies come into this sector that have been very active in other technologies and they are now trying to bring effective tools into the healthcare sector.

"This project opens doors for such organisations."

Universities play a linchpin role by bringing together companies and healthcare providers however they also bring academic rigour and new strands of thinking not found in the corporate world.

Professor Bergmann said the healthtech industry was built around collaboration because without it, or if it is reduced, then products are produced which are not fit for purpose.

"Healthtech is not possible without collaboration as it's all about stakeholder engagement, he said.

"If you are trying to create an impact within a healthcare space then you have to talk to the clinicians, the healthcare providers and talk to the patient groups.

"If you don't do this then you might develop technology which isn't fit for purpose and won't be of interest to the hospital or the patients or you won't be able to get regulatory approval because of issues with compliance.

"You have to engage with a broad group of users and stakeholders and also those who have an influence over the process such as policymakers."

Dr Lubega said collaboration helped de-risk innovations in the sector and drive forward technological advancements.

He said: "SIGHT allows for pre-competitive research and development and underpins new developments in the healthtech sector. Collaboration allows companies to gain access to cutting edge technology and talent, which brings societal benefit as it brings on stream previously unimaginable advances.

"Academics are very good at finding problems and companies are good at taking these ideas away and putting them into practice. This approach has benefits for company performance and is a great way to de-risk R&D investment, especially for companies that have not been involved in this regulatory environment before.”

Albus Health emerged from the Oxford Healthtech Labs programme and is a strong example of academic and industry collaboration.

The company started out by observing patients in hospitals who suffered from asthma and observed that many sufferers do not notice or react to a deterioration in their condition until it is too late for medication to make a difference.

Albus Health deduced from their observations that an app, which patients used to monitor their own condition, would be ineffective as the problem was rooted in the fact that these patients did not appreciate the current severity of their illness.

Albus Health developed a bedside monitoring system which would monitor a patient's breathing and alert health professionals early enough to prevent hospitalisation and also sparked another insight which showed that patient's asthma symptoms at night were clearer.

Armed with these two insights and an appreciation that getting a standalone product in this field regulated was a lengthy process, Albus Health decided to work with a pharma company that was creating medication for asthma patients.

Their technology is now being used to monitor the effect that medication is having on patients as getting data on how patients respond overnight has traditionally proved very difficult to access.

Professor Bergmann said: "Within a couple of years, Albus Health went from being formed, to developing a system which they were then able to sell into pharma.

"It is a good success example which shows a clear need identified, having the technology that fits and a deeptech company which has thought about the route to market."