This month, the South West’s most innovative life sciences, medical tech and health tech startups and SMEs will gather in Bristol for the Medilink South West Healthcare Business Awards awards at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol).
With tickets now on sale for the event, which will be held on 22 March, there’s plenty of time for organisations, startups, entrepreneurs and businesses interested in health tech to get involved – with the night itself set to include inspiring talks, demonstrations and networking, plus great food and drink to boot.
“Winning a Medilink award would give us the platform, network and boost to get to market”
Ash Syuleyman (pictured left) events organiser at UWE Bristol tells us: “The Medilink awards were set up to celebrate the achievements of companies in the life sciences and technology sector. We celebrate innovators – the people with fantastic ideas who push us all forward and create exciting new opportunities, increase growth and bring new perspectives and jobs to the region.”
With that in mind the evening will, of course, be a time for the shortlisted companies to find out if they’re the lucky winners of a Medilink award. And with Medilink an organisation that offers health technology business support not just in the South West but across the UK, winners will also be invited to the grand final at the Medilink UK Awards in April 2018.
The future of health
One of the shortlisted companies Walk to Beat, was founded by UWE Bristol student Neha Chaudhry (pictured right) – who previously won the SPARKies 2017 FutureSPARK award for her work building the business which is centred on a smart walking stick to help sufferers of Parkinson’s disease.
She told us: “Winning a Medilink award would give Walk to Beat the platform, network and most of all the boost that it requires right now for it to get to market. It will allow me to fulfil the promise made to all those sufferers who can benefit from the product.”
“Winning this award would validate our novel approach to enabling voluntary, community and social enterprise projects using the latest tech”
Neha will be joined on the night by fellow shortlisted company Digital Algorithms – a social prescribing and wellbeing project. Damian Gardner-Thorpe, CEO of Digital Algorithms says: “Winning this award would mean so much to us. It would validate our novel approach to enabling voluntary, community and social enterprise projects using the latest tech.
“Our VolHub project, which is the subject of our nomination, has proven itself to be first of type of tech that joins together a raft of apparently disparate opportunities that can be given to people in need of progression to wellbeing. If we are successful in this award we will be able to roll out the VolHub nationally to any interested commissioner and show how tech, as an enabler, is scalable and ready now to improve service design.”
These shortlisted companies will be joined by the likes of Ultramed – providers of a paperless solution that takes advantage of the cloud to allow surgeons to carry out pre and post-op assessments, improving efficiency in the NHS.
“We have achieved what is a very rapid traction in the NHS market, having completed seven commercial trials within three years of incorporating”
Winners of a Medilink award in 2016, Ultramed is a shining endorsement to the impact of the Medilink award for businesses. As Ultramed’s co-founder Dr Paul Upton (pictured right) explains: “Winning a further award would be hugely beneficial to Ultramed and our premium product MyPreOp, as it all helps with improving industry awareness of the impact we are making nationally. We have achieved what is a very rapid traction in the NHS market, having completed seven commercial trials within three years of incorporating.
“This meant setting up the company, developing the idea, taking it to market and achieving commercial revenues. This success has been recognised by ‘the crowd’ in having over-funded on Crowdcube to 300% of our target, and now having close to 500 shareholders. At Ultramed we are now investing heavily to drive adoption and spread across the NHS. This effort would be helped enormously by winning the south-west award for achievement from Medilink.”
Get involved
The Medilink SW awards are due to take place on Thursday 22 March at 4 – 8pm at UWE Bristol’s high-tech incubator Future Space and is a great opportunity to all involved in or interested in health tech to network with some of the key leaders and entrepreneurs in the industry.
“There are so many things to look forward to that it is very hard to pick”
Commenting on what she’s most looking forward to on the night, Ash adds: “There are so many things to look forward to that it is very hard to pick! On the day there will be a talk by Bill Cruise, chair of Medilink UK, intellectual property drop-ins, company demos, networking and of course our Food Fusion experience.
“I am a big foodie so I am looking forward to the ‘Right wine, Right cheese?’ tasting organised by none other than the chair of wine producers group in the UK. As our purpose is to support and help expand local companies, we have a delicious selection of locally produced food to fuel us up.”
MediLink South West is being organised by the University of the West of England this year on the lead up to the launch of its multi-million pound Health Tech Hub, so those interested in joining the South West MediLink network can do so for free in 2018.
You can purchase a ticket to the Medilink South West awards via the Medilink Eventbrite page. To find out more about Medilink South West, check out the Medilink SW Facebook page or follow them on Twitter here: @medilinksw.
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