Health Innovation Manchester provides £200k to firms via Momentum Fund

AI to support patients to manage their diabetes, a clinical decision platform to help with earlier discharges from the Emergency Department and an online system to match clinician availability to patient needs in real-time were among four winners set to receive a share of £200,000 to improve health and care in Greater Manchester.

The Momentum Fund was established to support the introduction and adoption of needs-led, evidence-based innovations into the healthcare system within Greater Manchester.

This year, the fund sought innovations focussed on two themes – Urgent and Emergency Care and Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, nutrition or obesity (Cardiometabolic needs). Projects applied for up to £75,000 to help accelerate their innovations.

The four projects to receive funding will all support the response to COVID-19 by supporting people with long-term conditions, matching clinicians to patient need, reducing readmissions to hospital or optimising patient pathways and improving efficiency in emergency care.

Health Innovation Manchester selected the winners of the Momentum Fund with the help of a panel of representatives from patients and partners.

Through the fund, Health Innovation Manchester aims to improve the health of our citizens and promote economic development and wealth creation through the growth of local businesses and jobs.

Richard Deed, associate director for industry at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “This year we received more high-quality applications than ever before for our Momentum funding call.

“We began the process before the current COVID-19 pandemic began, but we have been impressed by how these innovative digital tools will be able to support the response to the crisis by keeping people healthy at home to reduce hospital admissions or improving care pathways within emergency care.

“We look forward to working with them during this challenging period to support the system, improve the health and wellbeing of our citizens and boost the local economy.”

Dr Paula Bennett, associate director of clinical development and utilisation management (UM) unit, was part of the team assessing the Momentum fund applications. 

She said: “Supporting urgent and emergency care and the wider health and care system has never been more important than the during the current pandemic. These projects and innovations can undoubtedly support urgent and emergency care by ensuring people can get the right care at the right time and in the right place, including delivering care in the home or as close to home as possible.”

Winners

Cambio CDS T-MACS awarded £50,000

Chest pain is a common reason for hospital admission for patients presenting at the Emergency Department, but many of these admissions could be safely avoided with improved diagnostic technology to rapidly rule out acute coronary syndromes (ACS) such as heart attack. Several clinical studies and real-world evaluations show that the Troponin-only Manchester Acute Coronary Syndrome (T-MACS) decision aid identifies those at low risk of heart attack, allowing for more patients to be discharged early. The funding will be used in collaboration with e-healthcare company Cambio CDS and its Open-Standards Clinical Decision Support platform. The project will develop and pilot an online app platform for T-MACS within the workflow to allow clinicians to calculate the risk, review recommended a course of action and save data for future T-MACS related research.

Professor Richard Body, consultant in emergency medicine, honorary lecturer in cardiovascular medicine at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, said: “This collaboration with Cambio CDS is crucial to ensure that our current endeavours remain fully compliant with changing regulations and to make the project scalable. The platform provided by Cambio CDS would enable hospitals across the world to rapidly adopt efficient clinical pathways to care for patients with chest pain, optimising patient care and reducing unnecessary use of precious healthcare resources.” 

Doc Abode awarded £50,000

Doc Abode is a workforce deployment solution that enables healthcare providers to expand additional workforce capacity, improve operational resilience and efficiency by allocating work to healthcare professionals (HCPs) at an individual patient level, in real-time, based on HCP's availability, proximity and expertise. The platform can enable cross-organisational working by sharing a geographically dispersed clinical workforce centred around the real-time needs and requirements of NHS patients.

Doc Abode provides healthcare professionals with a secure app installed on their phones. Healthcare providers can 'push' home visit and telephone/video triage requests to them directly. They are informed of the travel time to the patient (if applicable), whether the patient is their own registered patient and whether it is a language or specialism match. If the job request is accepted, HCP are provided with further information about the patient so they can view and record the consultation in the electronic patient record (EPR). 

Dr Taz Aldawoud, Doc Abode CEO said: “We’re delighted to be a beneficiary of The Momentum Fund. From our early-stage roll outs, we have witnessed first-hand that this transformational way of working motivates clinicians to work flexibly and in addition to their usual shifts. We have demonstrated the impact that this is already having on providers’ home visiting services and more recently with secure telephony and video consultations, and the potential it has to deliver system-wide benefits. This funding enables us to further develop our data-driven approach, building on our evidence-based model in support of roll out to other NHS providers.”

Gendius diabetes AI development awarded £50,000

Gendius have developed the Intellin app, which uses AI to calculate an individual’s risk of developing complications from their diabetes based on their clinical history. The platform then provides clinically validated hints and tips to empower and educate the individual on how to manage these risks and reduce their risk of developing diabetes-related complications. The funding will be used to analyse consented patient data across 250 GPs/1000+ patients to help improve the app’s existing algorithms.

Rory Cameron, CEO Gendius, said: “Winning this Momentum grant from Health Innovation Manchester will enable us to better understand how metabolic markers change over a ten-year period in people with diabetes. With this data we will develop improved algorithms in our Intellin platform that will enable better understanding of how resources can be allocated to support the complications of diabetes. This is a game changer and a whole new way of looking at diabetes.”

Howz for Health awarded £50,000

Howz for Health have developed a smart home system kit designed for older people which can detect changes in daily routines, signalling a change in an individual's health. Family and staff can view the information and receive alerts of differences and deviations from the established routine and can intervene at an earlier stage. The funding will be used to evaluate the kit with 50 patients who have two or more conditions, live independently and have recently been discharged from hospital or identified as at high risk of admission. The system aims to reduce re-admissions and relieve pressures on the Urgent Care systems.

Two further successful projects in this year’s Momentum fund have been temporarily paused during COVID-19 and the projects will be revisited at a later date.