Two innovators who have been supported by Health Innovation West of England have won funding from SBRI Healthcare, an Accelerated Access Collaborative initiative run in partnership with the Greener NHS programme and the Health Innovation Network to help improve patient care and save money, whilst also making the NHS greener.
LabCycle, a circular plastic consumables supply chain for research and healthcare systems, and Revolution-ZERO, a sustainable and economic Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) supplier, are two of 22 innovations to share an award of £3.2 million from the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare to help improve patient care and accelerate a greener NHS.
Cheryl Scott, Senior Programme Manager at Health Innovation West of England, said: “SBRI Healthcare is a national award-winning competitive programme that provides funding and support to both early-stage projects (enabling testing for business feasibility and technology development), as well as to more mature products by supporting real world implementation studies. Part of our support offer to healthtech innovators at Health Innovation West of England is to assist them with grant applications to SBRI and other funders, and in 2022-23 companies in our pipeline secured around £2.5 million funding in response to specific themed calls from SBRI.
“It is extremely encouraging to see that two companies, LabCycle and Revolution-ZERO, whom we have previously supported with successful applications, have now secured further funding to continue developing their exciting and transformative innovations into adoption-ready solutions that address the net zero challenges faced by our systems,” Cheryl added.
Climate change is a threat to global health, with more than 13 million deaths around the world each year due to avoidable environmental causes. Air pollution alone accounts for up to 38,000 deaths a year in the UK, and contributes toward increased cases of asthma, cancer and heart disease (WHO, 2022).
In October 2020, the NHS became the first health service in the world to commit to reaching net zero with the ‘Delivering a net zero NHS’ report and then the Health and Care Act in July 2022 introduced net zero into legislation in the NHS.
Innovations across the NHS are already playing a critical role in helping to achieve net zero goals, while continuing to improve standards of care for patients, and increase efficiencies and productivity.
Verena Stocker, Interim Director of Research, Life Sciences and Strategy, NHS England and Chief Executive Officer, Accelerated Access Collaborative, said: “The SBRI Healthcare awards help the NHS to develop new technologies and solutions to address some of the biggest healthcare challenges facing society. We have selected these innovations because they have the potential to make a big difference to patients while also helping to achieve a net zero NHS. By supporting the most promising innovations the NHS will continue to evolve, helping meet more patients’ needs and encouraging more innovators to come forward with ideas that make a difference.”
You can read further details on the SBRI Healthcare funding here.
Posted on May 8, 2024
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