Welcome to the Health Matters’ case studies series, where we will be speaking to the business leaders who have successfully used our programme to take their product or service to new heights in the health and care sectors.
In this blog, we catch up with Dr. Michael Watts, Co-founder of Blum Health
Founded in 2019, Blum Health are a MedTech company that have navigated the complex digital health industry to create human centred clinical software in collaboration with medical experts. They help improve the lives and experiences of patients and care providers through bespoke digital health design and development.
How did your company find out about the Health Matters programme?
This came about through working with our local Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN), The Innovation Agency. They made us aware of how The LCR Health Matters programme is designed to help companies like ours to grow.
What challenges was your company facing prior to receiving support? What do you think the main barriers are for using emerging technology?
Proof of concept is a difficult scenario for all healthcare start-ups. As we had built six digital health solutions, we were acutely aware of how important it was to find a test bed for us to trial our solutions in. The main barriers to this is finding the key decision maker that will adopt your technology (whether as a pilot or procurement) but also having a compliant and robust product that the key stakeholders can trust will work.
This is something we spent a long time on getting right prior to going to market.
What support did your company receive and how was it delivered?
The Health Matters team were fantastic. They introduced us to a wide range of individuals to better enable us to introduce our technology and services into the industry.
Not only did they make these great introductions the team stayed involved in the process, this was invaluable to us as it provided the credibility and reassurance that the ‘other side of the table’ might need when being introduced to such a young company
What new activity was your company able to do as a result of the support?
We were able to introduce new software technologies into the NHS and private sector as a result of our work within the Health Matters team at the Innovation Agency.
What impact did the support have?
Ultimately, this work has enabled us to scale our organisation, by winning more projects, creating a stronger network, and strengthening our value proposition of creating NHS-ready software solutions
What are your company’s plans as a result of this support?
We will continue to support our collaborative partners in the roll out of their digital solutions across the NHS, but we also look forward to exploring novel technologies, new geographies and meeting new clinical entrepreneurs wanting to understand what it takes to turn a clinical innovation idea to reality.
We are really excited about the future Blum Health.
Would you recommend the programme to other SMEs?
Most definitely, the team at Health Matters have been amazing and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the programme to others.
The Health Matters programme was part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund to support local businesses, with innovative solutions, to access the health and care markets.
By providing bespoke, one-on-one assistance, we help businesses hone their products and services. Through real-world validation we demonstrate their practical and commercial benefits.
