In this episode, the Healthy Thinking podcast series learns about the Accelerate programme, and how it can help individuals and businesses bring their ideas and products to market.
Listen to this episode of Healthy Thinking on:
Accelerating Innovation in Healthcare
If you are an entrepreneur with an exciting new product or service that you think might benefit patients, who or where do you turn to for expert advice and support?
The Accelerate programme does what it says on the tin- it speeds up the innovation process by offering bespoke research, access to clinicians and patients and development expertise to enterprises. Accelerate is a pioneering partnership between Life Sciences Hub Wales and three Welsh Universities.
In this episode of Healthy Thinking, Head of Life Sciences Wales’ Accelerate programme,Keith Palmer talks to three members of the programme who are passionate about developing innovation in the healthcare sector.
Dr Sean Jenkins of University of Wales Trinity St David thinks that Accelerate is essential to the future of Wales. “One of the crucial things is that the programme allows a company to get access to stuff that they wouldn't normally be able to access. And they might have a lot of plans for commercial development, but they simply don't have the capacity. The Accelerate programme unlocks that potential by providing additional staff time resources and the ability to research particular challenges and problems that the company needs to overcome”.
Clinical Innovation Hub Manager in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University, Barbara Coles thinks the links between academia, clinicians and industry have been improved through Accelerate. “Being able to link those three together has definitely provided a pathway ....true collaborative research to take products and services through to fruition. And it's about that development of different services as well as products, that we see real patient improvements. For example,we've got a really large ophthalmology project that will have an impact on the eyesight of 8500 people.”
Joining the discussion is Dr. Natalie de Mello HTC Senior Innovation Technologist at Swansea University. She says, “ We love innovators, we're really keen to chat to innovators…and here we have four partners with a huge wealth of experience and it means that at every stage of development from bench testing to bedside, you have somebody who can help.”
How to listen to Healthy Thinking
Syniadau Iach
Listen to our Welsh language sister podcast, Syniadau Iach, which hears from leading thinkers in health and care innovation in the medium of Welsh