North-South MedTech Summit features healthcare and technology speakers across the UK

North-South MedTech Summit features healthcare and technology speakers across the UK

On 26th November 2021, a new virtual MedTech summit was held led by the NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-operative and Bournemouth University in partnership with the OVHcloud Startup Program and powered by Empact Ventures.

The event brought together hundreds of people in 20+ countries representing SMEs, innovators, academics and clinicians.

In the morning session, a keynote speech from David King, Digital Design Manager at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing and Research Centre (AMRC) covered the exciting new paradigm shift towards Surgery 4.0. The afternoon keynote speech from Dr Rob Middleton, Professor of Orthopaedics at Bournemouth University who focused on ‘The Road Ahead’ towards academics, clinicians and industry working together. 

The event also featured 35+ speakers across 7 roundtables with insightful discussions from Identifying Funding Options for MedTech to University and Industrial Collaborations. The speakers from across the MedTech ecosystem included Innovate UK, IQ Capital, the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network, the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), the University of Leeds, Brandon Medical Co and more. 

Throughout the event, MedTech startups and scale-ups across the UK, Ireland and Europe presented their innovations to the audience to welcome collaborations. These included QV Bioelectronics in Manchester, CanSense in Swansea, UNEEG Medical UK and Medisieve in London, iLof (Intelligent Lab on Fiber) in Oxford, Miwendo Solutions in Barcelona, VirtuLeap in Lisbon, Happyr Health in Cambridge and RemmedVR in Warsaw.

The event was also supported by HealthTech World and the Leeds Academic Health Partnership (LAHP). 

Vee Mapunde, Programme Director of the National Institute for Health Research Surgical MedTech Co-operative, commented: “We are extremely grateful to the team at Empact Ventures for delivering our North-South MedTech Summit with Bournemouth University, and sourcing OVHcloud as our industry partner. They enabled the start of some very interesting conversations for stakeholders within the surgical medical technology sector, and these are now in the process of being translated into collaborations. This event brought together healthcare professionals, industry, academics and funders, to have discussions on next steps for digital surgery.”

Ian Jones, Head of External Engagement at Bournemouth University commented: “We were delighted to co-host the North-South MedTech Summit showcasing MedTech collaborations supported by Empact Ventures and OVHcloud. At BU, we're committed to helping people live better for longer, through the research we conduct, to the courses we teach and our industry partnerships. The Conference was a success and proved to be a great opportunity to engage with prospective partners showcasing the latest industry technology” 

Philip Marais, UK-Northern Europe Lead of the OVHcloud Startup Program commented: “The North-South MedTech Summit showed again that collaboration is key to success in the MedTech ecosystem. Working together on this event with NIHR, Bournemouth University and Empact Ventures broke down silos and created great learning and economic opportunities for those involved and will certainly boost the efforts of the startups and scaleups that participated.”

Kosta Mavroulakis, Founder & CEO of Empact Ventures & Super Connect for Good, added: “The North-South MedTech Summit was a fantastic event showcasing the best emerging MedTech startups and scale-ups addressing unmet needs in the healthcare system today and tomorrow. I'd like to thank all our partners, speakers, exhibitors and attendees for joining us for our third MedTech initiative of the year.”

To learn more, visit the following link where the events’ videos will be posted by January 2022: https://empact.ventures/north-south-medtech-summit/  

Ends 

For more information contact:

Kosta Mavroulakis, CEO, Empact Ventures

T: 01202 985 134

kosta@empact-ventures.com

About NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-operative

The NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-operative supports the development of medical technologies in the fields of colorectal, vascular and hepatopancreaticobiliary (liver, gall bladder and pancreas) surgery to improve healthcare and quality of life for patients.  We are hosted by the Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the second biggest healthcare provider in the UK, working closely with the University of Leeds, a leading UK University with strengths in biomedical research.

There are important challenges that cut across General Surgery. “Safer Surgery” is a priority area of national (UK National Patient Safety Agency) and international (WHO Safer Surgery Saves Lives) importance. 30% – 50% of patients undergoing major abdominal surgery suffer a complication, inflating the cost of care by ~6-fold and causing long-term physical, psychological, and financial consequences. Surgical site infection and anti-microbial resistance are high on the national agenda, and there is a real need to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable patients undergoing emergency surgery.

One of the most significant advances in surgical practice has been the introduction of minimally invasive therapies (laparoscopic and endoluminal), with benefits for patients in terms of quicker recovery, and healthcare providers in terms of efficiency savings.  Although there is no shortage of surgical innovation, few devices make it into clinical practice; only 9.8% of surgical innovations are translated to first-in-man studies, with ~1% being widely adopted. Early clinical involvement has been identified as the biggest obstacle to successful translation. By working with our key stakeholders, the NIHR Surgical MIC will address many of the important unmet surgical needs and provide the expertise and resource needed to translate new technologies into patient benefit.

For more information, visit https://surgicalmic.nihr.ac.uk/ 

About Bournemouth University

Bournemouth University has more than 19,000 students and is ranked as one of the top 100 young universities in the world. It also features the Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation (IMIV) to support high-quality research and education in the fields of medical imaging and medical visualisation including a state-of-the-art Siemens 3T MRI Scanner.

For more information, visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk 

About OVHcloud Startup Program

OVHcloud is a leading European cloud hyperscaler and has been a cloud and infrastructure provider for over 20 years, with 1.6 million customers worldwide served by 33 global water-cooled data centres. The OVHcloud Startup Program is a global program that has been running since 2015 and has received 7000 applications of which more than 2000 have been assisted with cloud credits and solution architecture support. It provides tech startups with €10,000 of cloud hosting credits and up to €100,000 for scale-ups, enabling them to facilitate exponential and international growth.

For more information, visit https://startup.ovhcloud.com/

About Empact Ventures

Empact Ventures are global super connectors who co-design initiatives, scout for world-class innovation for larger organisations and funders and open the right doors at the right time for tech startups and scale-ups.

We bring people together based on mutual need and interest in a personalised and facilitated way to support you in creating strong relationships and partnerships. We work with both people and organisations in the private, public and third sector to understand their needs, interests and challenges. We then bring them together with those that can address these areas through our initiatives, projects and ventures.

Our co-designed initiatives include the Super Connect Series, Super Connect for Good Competition, Virtual Northern MedTech Summit, Market Access for MedTech, StartUp Britain and more.

For more information, visit 

Empact.ventures.com l www.superconnectforgood.com l www.superconnectseries.com