Novartis BIOME UK announces selection for the HealthHub 21 Challenge, in collaboration with KQ Labs and LifeArc

• Living With, Macusoft, Mendelian and NeutroCheck have been announced as the selected companies for the Novartis BIOME UK HealthHub 21 Challenge, in collaboration with KQ Labs and LifeArc.

• The HealthHub runs annually through the Novartis BIOME UK and provides start ups with a wealth of support, including mentoring, networking opportunities, access to commercial and healthcare masterclasses, investor meetings, as well as an option for up to £50,000 funding from LifeArc.

• Through its support for health tech start-ups, Novartis UK is reaffirming its commitment to supporting the development of digital and data driven healthcare solutions to help the healthcare system to build back better.

London, UK. July 14, 2021: Novartis UK has today announced the selected companies for the Novartis BIOME UK HealthHub 21 Challenge, in collaboration with KQ Labs, the data-driven health accelerator of the Francis Crick Institute, and LifeArc, the charity helping to turn promising science into benefits for patients.

Out of a wide field of applications across the smartest and brightest the UK health-tech eco-system has to offer, the selected start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will be supported as part of the BIOME UK HealthHub 21 cohort to develop and scale their concepts to digitise patient pathways and advance remote care, helping to address the core challenges of the NHS at this time.

Chinmay Bhatt, Managing Director of Novartis UK, Ireland & Nordics and Country President UK, comments: “At Novartis UK, we are dedicated to supporting the NHS in building back better from the pandemic, especially through the uptake of digital solutions to improve service delivery, research outputs and the overall patient experience.

“This year’s selected BIOME UK HealthHub companies are developing solutions with the potential to drive real change for the healthcare system and for patients. I am looking forward to joining them on their journeys and seeing the measurable benefits they will bring to the NHS and patients over the coming months and years.”

The four selected companies are Living With, Macusoft, Mendelian and NeutroCheck. Read more about each company below:

Living With

Living With is a cutting-edge platform that consists of an app for patients, a clinician portal to monitor that patient and support faster interventions and a third-party dashboard for the management of multiple clinics and to access to aggregated and anonymised data. Living With enables clinicians to intervene in real-time to prevent further condition deterioration and to optimise individual treatment.

Macusoft

Macusoft is an artificial intelligence (AI) clinical decision support system for the optimal management of sight-threatening macular disease, the leading cause of sight loss in the developed world. By standardising outcomes, delivering clinical efficiency and enabling workforce expansion, Macusoft improves the quality of eye care and can be deployed rapidly at scale across health systems to alleviate the overburden in eye departments and reduce unnecessary sight loss.

Mendelian

MendelScan is an expert-guided, algorithm-based platform that brings early disease identification and timely patient insights to healthcare providers. MendelScan’s digital library includes case finding criteria for rare and hard-to-diagnose diseases, ready to apply to any medical record system. The MendelScan platform from Mendelian will support clinicians to diagnose their patients as early as possible in order to maximise treatment outcomes.

NeutroCheck

NeutroCheck is an innovative device that helps to rapidly identify chemotherapy patients who are at risk of a life-threatening complication called neutropenic sepsis. Through improving triaging, Neutrocheck has the potential to save thousands of lives, free up valuable healthcare resources, and make patients' lives easier, simpler, and better.

Living With, Macusoft, Mendelian and NeutroCheck will receive unrivalled mentoring, networking opportunities and sustainable investments from the Novartis BIOME UK, KQ Labs and LifeArc. In addition, participating companies will be supported to establish ongoing relationships with the wider health-tech ecosystem, the NHS and Novartis at the end of the programme. Each company offers solutions that aim to address the needs of the time in the healthcare system.

This year’s BIOME UK HealthHub participants will be speaking about their solutions and initial experiences of the HealthHub 21 programme at a live demo webinar in September 2021.

Konrad Dobschuetz, Head of Digital Innovation and BIOME Lead at Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK, said: “The BIOME UK team is absolutely delighted to welcome the four companies into the family and we are looking forward to making things happen with them. The Novartis BIOME UK has established itself as an entity for innovation in the UK health-tech sector and as a catalyst for impactful digital collaboration, dedicated to partnering with the best in the ecosystem.

“We are very grateful for the collaboration with KQ Labs and LifeArc and the support received so far. We thank all companies that applied for this year’s HealthHub, showcasing the smartest and brightest the UK health-tech sector has to offer.”

Andrew Farquharson, Executive Director of LifeArc, comments: “The entries displayed a tremendous breadth and depth of ideas, underlining the potential of digital and data-led innovations to improve healthcare. As LifeArc is a charity helping to progress early-stage ideas into tangible health benefits, it will be fascinating to see the four winners develop and scale up their promising innovations”.

Barbara Domayne-Hayman, Entrepreneur in Residence and lead for KQ Labs at the Francis Crick Institute, said: “We have greatly enjoyed working with Novartis and LifeArc on the selection process and were impressed by the number and quality of the applications, which provide a window into some of the exciting developments happening in digital health. We look forward to working with the selected companies”.

Veronique Birault, Director of Translational Science at the Francis Crick Institute, said: “We are delighted with the collaboration with Novartis through KQ Labs, joining forces to support the healthtech start-up ecosystem, and we look forward to growing the relationship between Novartis and the Crick”.