On 23 November, we welcomed 10 companies from the current P4SY Accelerator Programme cohort to Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries for the P4SY Showcase & MedTech Conference, bringing together startups and domain experts from across the region for a day of pitching and presentations on the development of South Yorkshire’s medtech ecosystem.

First to take the stage was Peter Fish, CEO of rare disease startup Mendelian. The company’s first product, MendelScan, is a clinical decision support tool that scans through medical records at scale, using clinically validated detection algorithms to find cases of rare and hard to diagnose diseases. As Peter explained, current estimates predict that 1 in 10 of us will someday be diagnosed with a so-called rare disease, which can often take years to diagnose due to a lack of familiarity among GPs. The company recently completed its 10 millionth scan and is currently raising its Series A.

Next up was Angela Malik, CEO and founder of Planet Nourish. The company’s aim is to level the playing field and improve health outcomes for underrepresented populations with an ethnically-focused Prevention as a Service (PaaS) digital platform delivering hyper-personalised food, lifestyle and behavioural change recommendations. The company’s first target are British Asian populations, one of the factors that initially attracted them to working in the South Yorkshire region. The company is currently raising a pre-seed round and seeking to build partnerships with enterprise clients and health insurance providers.

Zorrie Dimitrova, COO of GlycanAge, introduced the audience to the importance of glycans, protein biomarkers which we carry on the surfaces of every cell and which have been underexplored to date as a way of predicting health changes and disease. The founding team behind GlycanAge are the world’s leading glycan experts and the company is pioneering a B2B2C model through a network which already includes 400 medical providers and 15,000 direct customers, more than half of which test multiple times. They are currently raising a seed round with half of the amount committed.

Eupnoos CEO and founder Arshia Gratiot explained the company’s mission to improve monitoring of lung diseases using breathing sounds and smartphone sensors, speeding up diagnosis and giving patients better insight into their own health. With a special focus on preventive healthcare, the company is currently raising a seed round and seeking partnerships with NHS community leads to validate specific population cohorts such as people with asthma, COPD, and fibrotic diseases.

Luis Rodrigues, CEO of Kinetikos, has developed a solution for passive monitoring of patients with movement disorders, starting with Parkinsons. The Kinetikos software platform has already been used by more than 1,700 patients in research settings and clinical practice in the company’s home market of Portugal, as well as the United Kingdom, Spain, and the United States. The mobile app is available in the UK and has been DTAC cleared and ORCHA certified while the company looks to raise a Series A.

Jiva.ai demonstrated their no-code platform to make AI accessible to any type of business user. As CEO and co-founder Manish Patel told the audience, Jiva’s technology allows small teams to create, test, validate, and deploy practical and usable AI tools including for purposes such as diagnostics at a fraction of the cost of an AI team. The company is currently raising a £4.5 million round, with £2.1 million already committed, and is seeking channel partnerships with companies that can resell Jiva.ai services to their own client base.

Saran Muthiah of EnrichMyCare pitched the company’s offering for children and young people with disabilities and long-term conditions: a personalised platform for self-monitoring and multi-disciplinary team (MDT) management. The company is currently seeking seed investment, and looking for opportunities to scale up the existing platform at system level and develop collaborations with Integrated Care System partners from health, care, and education.

As Dr Keith Tsui of Medwise explained, many clinicians in patient-facing roles lack a single authoritative source of medical information which they can quickly and reliably access when evaluating their patients. That’s why Medwise has been created as a search engine for health professionals to use at the point of care. Already used by more than 500 providers across 50 care commissioning groups, Medwise was recently awarded an Innovate UK Smart Grant. They are currently completing a seed round and seek to expand relationships with NHS trusts up and down the country.

Mark Bartlett, CEO of StoreGene, explained his company’s Clinical Genomic Operating System which integrates genomics into every stage of the healthcare journey. With a single test that reveals 20,000 genes and 3.2 billion base pairs, the company aims to move genetic testing from the laboratory to the cloud, making it possible for doctors to draw on this data to inform individual treatment approaches. The company is currently raising its seed round and anticipates increasing revenue by 10x over the next year.

Dr Phil Alton, a former NHS emergency doctor, started Senti Tech with the goal of making it easier to monitor patients with conditions such as asthma and COPD in a virtual ward model. The Senti Smart Garment is a medical device, worn like a tabard, that uses sensors to capture breath and heart sounds and inform decision-making by health professionals, allowing them to better adjust medication in real time. The company is currently completing a single site medical study and plans to raise a £10 million series A next year. They are also looking for further partnerships with NHS community teams in more regions, outside Liverpool and Essex where they are already active.

Before and after the pitching, the audience heard from guest speakers Will Gibbs of Octopus Ventures and conference sponsor Mark Jackson of Scarborough Group International, as well as Dr Richard Cullen, Clinical Lead for Digital & Innovation, SYB Integrated Care Board.

Prof Tony Young, National Clinical Lead for Innovation, NHS England delivered a rousing keynote touching on the importance of medical innovation and his work as national lead for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme.

A panel on the future of the medtech sector heard from Prof Wendy Tindale, Dr Mandy Dixon, entrepreneur in residence Alan Pooley, and Goddess Gaia Ventures founder Priya Oberoi-Cattai.

P4SY companies exhibiting included:

  • Holly Health, a digital health and well-being coach that helps users with personalised, habit-forming positive behaviour change for physical and mental health;
  • Gold Standard Phantoms, improving the quality of MRIs through standardisation thereby improving diagnostic confidence;
  • Mint Diagnosticsinnovative saliva testing and visualisation providing hormone data intelligence for women’s health and wellbeing;
  • XR Therapeuticsdeveloping a treatment that combines cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with virtual reality to support people with phobias and anxieties.

If you are interested in a warm introduction to one of the P4 SY cohort companies, please get in touch with Programme Manager & MedTech Connector Philippa Takhar or P4 SY Programme Coordinator Tamara Moon