18 life science companies from across the Midlands have been selected as winners at the Medilink Midlands Business Awards 2022, which saw over 160 business people from life science companies across the region and beyond come together to celebrate and reflect on the past year.

The awards recognise organisations in the life science sector who in the past year have excelled in different areas, including Start-up, Export Achievement, Delivering Innovation in to Health and Care, Advances in Digital Healthcare, Partnership between Academia and Business, Innovation, One to Watch and Outstanding Achievement.

The first winning companies to be announced were Heal Med CIC from the East Midlands and Neokare Nutrition from the West Midlands, who received the Start Up Award, sponsored by the Medical Technologies Innovation Facility (MTIF). This award is for businesses that show a great deal of potential.  

HEAL.med aims to ensure every child diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes has access to high quality and effective education through a Social Enterprise. This is delivered as Deapp, the Diabetes Education Application.

NeoKare Nutrition is a research-based company that have developed and manufactures products derived from donated human milk for premature/critically ill babies.

The Export Achievement Award, which was sponsored by Morningside Pharmaceuticals, looked at companies which have experienced substantial growth in overseas earnings and commercial success. Surescreen Diagnostics and POWERbreathe International won this award.

Established in 1996, SureScreen have been providing proactive, bespoke diagnostic solutions to organisations for nearly 25 years. The company has developed a COVID-19 Antigen test kit and is supplying more than 50 international markets.

POWERbreathe is the manufacturer of a range of inspiratory muscle training devices. It is often dubbed as being like a ‘set of dumbbells for your lungs’. POWERbreathe supported the University of Colorado as part of their major clinical trial into lowering blood pressure and reducing heart attack risk. During the trial, they found significant drops in blood pressure and improvements in large-artery function among trial participants who used POWERbreathe’s device.

The Award for Delivering Innovation in to Health and Care, sponsored by the East and West Midlands Academic Health Science Networks, looked at innovations that are being adopted by the NHS and which demonstrate an impact on efficacy, patient outcomes and NHS system costs. This award was won by Tutum Medical and Innovation Factory.

Tutum Medical design and manufacture medical technologies and its overall aim is to improve global healthcare through innovation. The first product from Tutum Medical is BEAMS (Bedside Equipment Alarm Monitoring System). BEAMS allows Nurses to improve response times to medical alarms.

Innovation Factory is dedicated to developing sound recognition algorithms for a wide range of industries such as safety, security, comfort, and the healthcare sector.

SnoRelief is a sound classification algorithm to detect and classify snoring sounds and sleep apnoea by utilising a group of deep learning algorithms. The algorithms will classify sleep apnoea completely remotely without the patient needing to attach/wear any sensors, as it uses only audio data to make decisions via the patients Smartphone.

The next award to be announced was the Advances in Digital Healthcare Award. This award is brand new for 2022 and is awarded to companies who demonstrate how digital technologies were employed to enhance current service delivery or create new ways of delivering healthcare. This award was won by Spirit Digital and Blackspace Technology.

Spirit Digital provides products and services that are underpinned by market-leading technology and a refreshing, unique approach to healthcare. CliniTouch Vie is Spirit’s multi-award-winning digital health platform, delivering effective remote patient monitoring, patient education and self-management. By combining clinically-validated question sets and vital sign readings, clinicians are able to monitor for signs of deterioration remotely and intervene whenever necessary. Their unique algorithms generate red/amber/green rated patient lists to help clinicians deliver the right care to the right patient at the right time.

Black Space Technology develop cutting-edge military focused telehealth and telemedicine software products using flexible, agile methodologies, combined with rigorous development processes. The company has developed long COVID patient monitoring software. This is a sensor system and software for monitoring patients for long COVID using mobile phones, technology, and additional devices.

The Award for Partnership between Academia and Business was the second new award for 2022. It was sponsored by Anglia Ruskin’s ARISE Hub and was awarded to companies who demonstrate how the collaboration / partnership has or will enhance current service delivery or create new ways of delivering healthcare. This award was won by SurePulse Medical and Interactive Software.

SurePulse is a University of Nottingham spin-out. Their vision is to revolutionise neonatal vital signs monitoring, giving clinicians and healthcare providers the tools to provide optimal care for newborn babies. The University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering provide electronic engineering expertise and guidance and regular meetings are held where the design, clinical user requirements and signal processing developments are all discussed.

Interactive Software Limited provides Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Biobanking software and CRM Systems that improve quality and compliance, and instil good practice through effective processes.

Residual Barrier Technology and Heartflow picked up the award for Innovation, sponsored by TBAT Innovation Ltd. This award was given for the development of innovative technology, that has produced a major improvement in business performance and impacted the market.

Residual Barrier Technology is an innovative developer, formulator and manufacturer of biodegradable hygiene and infection control products. Their innovative and versatile Viridis disinfectant provides one formulation covering a variety of applications and continues to work after application. It forms the basis for their ground-breaking range that achieves broad spectrum kills on harmful bacteria and viruses.

HeartFlow combines human ingenuity with advanced technology to enable physicians to precisely diagnose and optimise treatment for patients with suspected coronary artery disease. HeartFlow is the first non-invasive diagnostic tool that leverages artificial intelligence together with expert review to aid clinicians in determining both the extent of an artery’s narrowing and the impact that this has on blood flow to the heart.

The One to Watch award was chosen by the Medilink Midlands Business Awards Judging Panel and looked at businesses that show a great deal of potential. This award was won by Blueskeye AI, Eureka Inventions, Neurotherapeutics and Senior Home Solutions.

Blueskeye AI builds objective, accessible, scalable, affordable solutions and products for monitoring wellbeing and mental health. Their core technology enables patients, the public and medical professionals to streamline the provision of care and services using accurate, objective diagnosis, insights and longitudinal monitoring of patients across the globe. They leverage state of the art face and voice sensing technology to provide compelling healthcare solutions.

Eureka Inventions is a team of healthcare professionals with the mission of improving safety in childbirth and surgery by preventing surgical items being accidentally retained. They have been granted a patent for a cost-effective, transportable swab counter/swab docking device. Following a successful proof-of-concept usability testing, the initial prototype is now being developed by The Manufacturing Technology Centre. 

Neurotherapeutics Ltd is a medtech company building on research into Tourette syndrome that began in 2005. Studies included the use of multi-modal brain imaging and brain stimulation to investigate brain network function in Tourette syndrome, including how alterations in brain structure, function, and chemistry might be responsible for the remission of tics in Tourette syndrome. A research paper and positive clinical results led to the formal establishment of the company in January 2021.

Senior Home Solutions has a clear and simple mission: “Catch them before they fall”. Through innovation they have invented a handrail called “Grab A Rail.” The solution can be retro fitted, cost effectively and at speed to new and existing rooms, helping to prevent falls in the most dangerous place in the home: ‘The Kitchen.’

The final award, Outstanding Achievement award, was sponsored by Mills & Reeve LLP, and recognises an achievement which has had a significant or vital impact on the company and market. The Outstanding Achievement Award was won by Spirit Health Group and Kimal PLC.

Spirit businesses have saved the NHS millions of pounds and improved the lives of thousands of patients. Whether it’s their medicines optimisation programmes, high-quality primary care provision, market-leading digital health services or healthcare pathway services, you can rely on Spirit to deliver, brilliantly.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Spirit rapidly re-aligned their remote monitoring platform to provide continuity of care for over 1,000 patients. Spirit adapted and quickly deployed CliniTouch Vie to enable patients to isolate safely, whilst still receiving brilliant, safe and responsive care. Spirit not only provided a remote monitoring solution to serve clinician and patient needs during the height of a pandemic, but also offered a full-service implementation, including training and support, to ensure it was used effectively and to take the burden off NHS teams.

Kimal manufactures over 2 million procedure packs and vascular access devices every year for a range of specialities including: cardiology, radiology, pacing, laparoscopy, and cardiac surgery; and their unique, ground-breaking central venous catheter technology is helping to reduce patient risk in hospitals across the world. With a desire to provide support during the pandemic and ensure the company would survive to support its employees, partners and customers, Kimal made some bold decisions. The NHS was struggling for beds to treat patients and decided to build resource in the form of the Nightingale hospitals and to run efficiently there was a massive requirement for critical care products.

Kimal and its employees stepped up to the plate to support one of the oldest institutes in the country, the NHS. Kimal dedicated its catheter manufacturing facility to solely produce products for the NHS, it also ramped up production in its Bromsgrove facility to make procedure packs specifically for the Nightingale hospitals.

The winners of the Start-Up, Export Achievement, Delivering Innovation into Health and Care, Partnership between Academia and Business, Advances in Digital Healthcare, Innovation and Outstanding Achievement awards will go on to be shortlisted for a Medilink UK Healthcare Business Awards on 8 June, with the chance to be crowned national winners.