Birmingham: The emerging medical technology hotbed

Professor Gino Martini, CEO of the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator (PHTA Ltd), explains why Birmingham is the emerging hotbed of medtech innovation and development.

Before taking this role, I knew that Birmingham and the West Midlands had the largest medtech cluster in the UK – with 1,000 businesses and a workforce of nearly 24,000 - but as an outsider looking in, I didn’t know why.

A year into the job and I have the answer: the strengths that Birmingham and the West Midlands can offer, are the strengths the sectors is crying out for. Not just in R&D but in health data, clinical trials expertise, biomarker diagnostic development, and regulation and policy. Birmingham’s also a ‘world within a city’, representing the global population in terms of its ethnic profile and socioeconomic demographics. Significantly, we’re able to recruit 25% non-white representation in most clinical trials – we’re not just perfectly placed to use our population diversity but are actively doing it already.

Much of this activity is being led by the University of Birmingham and its co-located Birmingham Health Partners NHS Trusts, so it was natural that – when developing Birmingham Health Innovation Campus (BHIC) with Bruntwood SciTech – the University decided to establish its own flagship research facility. That initial idea has become the PHTA – an advanced suite of facilities custom-designed to accelerate medical technologies through the translational pipeline.

PHTA will act as a catalyst and a home for collaborative interactions between academics, entrepreneurs, and clinicians with complementary skillsets, who can come together to accelerate innovations in a way that just can’t be done when the talent and experience isn’t under one roof. The result will be innovative new diagnostic tools, health technologies and medical devices which can reach patients faster, improving the lives of people in the city of Birmingham and far beyond.

The people we want to work with are SMEs and start-ups who see the value in co-locating their operations with both key opinion leaders in a vast array of clinical specialties, and likeminded enterprises who are keen to collaborate for patient benefit.

Take for example an SME specialising in endoscopy and developing a new device which can illuminate, record images, and take measurements during internal investigation of a patient. Upon joining the collaborative PHTA ecosystem, they’ll have access to professional services teams, particularly finance, who will facilitate meetings with investors. While funding is being established, they could be working with a consultant endoscopist from co-located University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) to help refine their design and give invaluable insight into not only how the device would be used in practice, but what real surgeons would want from it – ensuring it is fit for purpose and addresses real clinical need.

Biomedical engineers from the University could contribute to the design of a test rig modelled to mimic the real internal biological environment of a patient, to help accurately assess things like focus, mobility and recording settings in a realistic environment. At the same time, the University’s computer and health data scientists would help develop software to complement the new endoscope and analyse the data it collects – while our industry connections could facilitate productive conversations with manufacturers and packaging companies to make sure the SME’s ideas were not only achievable, but compliant with regulations too.

This type of business support and sharing of invaluable expertise is set to help companies that would have found it very difficult to get their product through that pipeline, and to do that much more quickly. Our ‘makerspace’ for prototyping and small-batch manufacturing will be particularly important to allow companies and inventors to create very early-stage versions of their products to show to investors when they’re trying to secure that initial injection of funding.

Meanwhile, they’ll be able to work with our NHS partners to access one of the longest-established health data ecosystems in the UK – UHB was one of the first trusts to adopt electronic health records and so has more than 20 years of data which it is beginning to link across other Midlands trusts and beyond. There’s a huge amount of willing across the region to share data and use it responsibly, for example linking genomic data together and using complementary pathways, infrastructure and governance for simplicity and security.

PHTA residents will also have easy access to world-leading centres close by, within the Birmingham Health Partners ecosystem. MD-TEC, for example, provides medtech businesses with state-of-the-art simulation and usability facilities alongside human factors engineering skills and guidance on intellectual property. We’re also home to the BHP Centre for Regulatory Science and Innovation, which takes a national lead on regulatory science, promoting efficient, safe and cost-effective implementation of new therapies and devices. All with patient benefit front-of-mind.

Around a year from its grand opening, PHTA has already won business from several fascinating organisations who’ve committed to take mixed lab and office space within the Accelerator, and who are already benefitting from this unrivalled access to Birmingham’s clinicians and academics.

Take biotechnology company Kiffik Biomedical – using a patented technique called electroporation, Kiffik’s device opens epidermal pores to allow extraction of interstitial fluid (ISF) via negative pressure, negating the need for needles. Its technology has wide-ranging applications in diagnostics - ISF has over 3,000 biomarkers available for assay - predictive interventions and novel therapeutics, and its full potential is as yet not fully known.

Since joining PHTA, Kiffik has been able to explore its suite of biomarkers with Birmingham experts in oncology, telemedicine, and trauma applications – all before the facility is physically operational.

Medtech enterprises should establish themselves at the PHTA because it will really provide them with a springboard to get their technologies through the translational pipeline and into the clinic far more rapidly, and far more efficiently, while also being supported to secure investment that will allow them to get their innovations adopted worldwide.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the BHIC development and our aspirations for medtech innovations through PHTA, head to our new website at www.phta.co.uk.