New accelerator to champion UK medtech startups
A new British healthcare technology accelerator launched in London on Friday with the aim of tackling the most pressing healthcare challenges.
The ‘HS.’ programme says its mission is to “build and scale healthcare technology businesses, help larger organisations drive healthcare innovation at a corporate level, and position the UK at the forefront of innovation in global healthcare”.
More than $23 billion has been invested in healthcare startups globally, over the past seven years. However, few accelerator programmes are in place to sustainably launch and scale these healthtech businesses - and even fewer are able to offer their members deep insights and guidance on how to successfully bring healthcare technologies to market. HS. has been designed around the needs of health-tech startups and has a team of healthcare experts and mentors.
Dr. Alex Young, CEO and co-founder of HS., said: “We’re approaching a pivotal moment in something that affects every one of us, every day: our health. Healthcare is on the cusp of radical transformation, and for the first time we will soon begin taking charge of our own health data. The HS. programme will harness the potential that change holds, and bring together brilliant minds with a singular focus: solving the world’s most pressing healthcare challenges with technology. Impact comes from scale, and we want to build UK health companies that scale internationally - to impact patients around the world and make the UK a hub of excellence for health-tech.
”Dr. Young is a trauma and orthopaedic surgeon by training. Whilst at medical school, he built and sold his first company before going on to found an award-winning medical education and publishing company; his latest company, Virti, is an immersive video training platform based in Silicon Valley and London. Dr. James Somauroo, his co-founder and CPO, has most recently led the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator - a £3.4m project in partnership with NHS organisations and the EU Regional Development Fund, providing market access to the NHS for high-potential healthcare businesses. He was also previously an Innovation Fellow for NHS England.
The HS. co-founders are joined by a group of clinical experts, startup advisors and mentors from organisations including Healthcare UK, MedCity, the BMJ, Department for International Trade, Johnson & Johnson and Philips.
For entrepreneurs and scale-ups, the HS. programme will place an emphasis on guiding and developing them as individuals and as businesses - and equip them with deep insights on how to achieve ‘product-patient fit’, matching them with clinical experts and patient groups even in their early stages.
At an event hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine in London last week, HS. also revealed its first cohort of entrepreneurs - 30 talented individuals across 13 companies, who were chosen from over 1,000 applicants after a rigorous selection process that focused on ‘talent and traction, before idea’. The first HS. cohort comprises of:
- Bioregenerative Technologies: uses intrinsic biological mechanisms to regenerate musculoskeletal tissues without surgery
- Feebris: an AI-powered mobile health platform for diagnosis and monitoring of children and the elderly
- FitXR: creates at-home fitness products that motivate and reward users, using Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
- Healthchain: a blockchain-based health data startup, connecting your health data with researchers and healthcare providers
- MRI.AI: uses computer vision algorithms to better interpret MRI scans
- Orbiject: a self-injection management system to empower diabetic patients and aid healthcare workers
- Qdoctor: a telehealth platform with an emphasis on quality of care provided
- RiseIQ: a voice-bot coaching platform to help dementia sufferers and their carers
- Respond: using cognitive insights and computer vision to help people with the early signs of dementia
- i-rehab: intelligent, robotic prosthesis to help amputees regain function and rehab more quickly
- Sermaurei: uses automatic speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning to make recording medical notes a breeze.
- Vesalian: making patient decision-making easier by providing accurate, intuitive and useful explanations on medical risks
- XenBot: a chatbot that uses introspective questioning and AI to help you organise your mind and concentrate on what matters most
Dr. Somauroo, co-founder and CPO, added: “The HS. founding team have broken down the traditional model of accelerator programmes, and rebuilt it specifically for building, scaling and innovating in healthcare while putting patients first. With our first cohort of businesses on board and the programme now open to corporate partners, we look forward to guiding their journey in tackling some of the world’s biggest healthcare problems with technology.”
Entrepreneurs, scale-ups and corporates interested in joining the HS. programme can find out more by visiting: www.hs.live