SurgTech Career LaunchPad

Professor Peter Thompson (Director of Programmes and Impact, NIHR Academy) will explain NIHR’s goals for supporting clinical researchers, its future strategy and how NIHR can help surgical team research careers.

This will feature five curated and selected MedTech startups,scale-ups and SMEs from across the UK, Ireland and Europe to present to the audience. They will be explaining the MedTech innovation they’ve developed, and their progress in going from academic research to commercialisation before outlining the development of their team and any career opportunities they currently have:

QV Bioelectronics (Manchester)

A pioneering medical device startup developing implanted technology for the next modality of cancer treatment, electric field therapy. They are developing cutting-edge technology with the aim of delivering transformative outcomes for Glioblastoma patients. Glioblastoma has some of the worst outcomes of any cancer, with 5-year survival rates <5%. Innovation in the space has been slow due to the complex nature of this cancer – meaning there are only 6 available FDA-approved therapies for this cancer. Comparatively, breast cancer has 61 FDA-approved treatment options. The founders, a biomedical engineer, and, a neurosurgeon, recognised this unmet need and combined their skills and expertise to develop the concept of the GRACE implant. Using an array of different sciences with an interdisciplinary approach, their talented and specialist team are striving towards delivering longer, better quality lives for brain tumour patients. Read More here

AZmed (Paris)

AZmed develops a leading computer-aided diagnosis tool powered by AI that detects all types of fractures in radiography. The first French CE-marked medical device in its category. Rayvolve is a computer-aided diagnosis tool designed by radiologists for radiologists to optimize their workflow without changing their habits. The software is capable of detecting fractures in standard X-rays. It has been clinically tested and has shown outstanding performance. There are 700+ practitioners concerned by Rayvolve, 1 million+ patients concerned by Rayvolve per year and 1 million X-rays collected for training Rayvolve. Read more here

CanSense (Swansea)

Bowel (colorectal) cancer is the second most common cancer globally. It is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world. Early diagnosis of bowel cancer significantly reduces the mortality rate. Current diagnostics tests such as colonoscopy or faecal blood detection kits can be invasive, unpleasant and expensive. CanSense is delivering an accurate, non-invasive, inexpensive blood test to diagnose bowel cancer early which is equivalent to a liquid biopsy for bowel cancer.They are using a label-free assay and combining laser spectroscopy with advanced data analytics. The development of a high throughput platform allows their diagnostic solution to be scalable. They continue to develop our product with large scale clinical studies. At CanSense the team ensures accuracy by utilising cutting-edge data analytics and machine learning to maximise the performance of our cancer diagnostic that reduces the need for invasive colonoscopy. As a University spin-out company they are dedicated to delivering our mission with full impact by bringing together leading scientists, clinicians and business expertise to deliver the rigour and requirements for diagnostic development. Read More here

MediSieve

MediSieve is a biotech company, developing “Magnetic Blood Filtration” (MBF), a combination of a device and a therapeutic platform for treating blood-borne diseases by removing pathogens, toxins or other targets directly from a patient’s bloodstream. From sepsis to malaria to leukaemia and viral infections, such as COVID-19, MediSieve has the ambition of providing hospitals with a tool to tackle some of mankind’s most serious diseases. The company’s first product is for the removal of IL-6 to treat patients experiencing hyper inflammation, including those suffering from sepsis, cytokine storms and COVID-19. The technology is pre-clinical, and MediSieve is currently raising £3.7M to support pivotal clinical trials. The company has recently been awarded a £1.55M grant from UKRI to trial the technology in COVID-19.

Mark Slack, Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer at CMR Surgical. Mark will leverage his deep experience as a robotics surgeon and entrepreneur to visualise the evolving interface between the MedTech industry, the NHS and mutual support between theatre team researchers and industry R&D.

Dr Dawn Carnes, Dawn Carnes, Professorial Research Fellow (University College of Osteopath) and Chair of the Council for Allied Health Professions in Research (CAHPR), will discuss how the Council for Allied health Professionals Research is working to change the UK health system structure and culture to transform future pathways for non-medical researchers

The Chairs from the Roundtable discussions will join together to discussion to solutions found within their sessions

The Digital Exhibition will provide you with an opportunity to connect with both MedTech SMEs and support organisations. It will enable you to view their support material and connect over video or text chat. You will be super connected by email with them if you select their ‘Super Connect Me’ button.

It will include:

• • NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-operative
  • NIHR Advanced Surgical Technology Incubator
  • Empact Ventures

The Networking Area will provide you with an opportunity to super connect with other attendees on a one-to-one basis over video.

The short 3-minute sessions are randomly allocated by the Hopin Virtual Event Platform which can be extended for another 3-minutes, or you can move to the next person.

If you would like to super connect with that person, select the ‘Connect’ button to exchange contact details.