Arden & GEM’s innovation partnership with the Satellite Applications Catapult, and a number of commercial and research partners, to develop a new approach to conducting endoscopies was highlighted in the latest report published by PUBLIC, “Buying into the Future: How to Deliver Innovation Through Public Procurement”.
The report aims to provide a framework for governments around the world to effectively buy innovation and technology. PUBLIC – which brings together experience from the public sector, technology and finance to help startups solve public problems – launched the publication on Friday 26 April, including a number of case studies to support its analysis and recommendations.
Arden & GEM is featured with its partners on pages 94-95 demonstrating how public authorities should use innovation partnerships to co-develop innovative solutions with the market. The CSU worked with a number of different suppliers throughout the lifecycle of the contract including SMEs such as CorporateHealth, Openbrolly, and Wolfram Research Europe as well as a number of universities and research institutions. This project is one of few examples of innovation partnerships being used in public contracting.
As an alternative to the traditional endoscopy, which can be painful and time-consuming, this partnership has developed ingestible capsules which record and wirelessly transmit images of a patient’s digestive system. As such, a patient can be screened for bowel cancer just by swallowing a capsule and transmitting the captured footage to their doctor. If used effectively, this process can improve early diagnosis outcomes, reduce the burden on local hospitals, while reducing cost and improving patient convenience.
With the imminent roll-out of the capsules across Scotland, this project shows how effective innovation partnerships can be for designing new solutions to long-standing public challenges.
“With the NHS Long Term Plan placing an emphasis on the adoption of digital solutions, this is a fantastic opportunity to assess the roll-out and benefits of a radical innovation and fully capitalise on the learning from the initiative to ensure that the service can be replicated at scale across the UK. Most critically, we will be assessing ways to ensure that this digital technology can be sustained and integrated into new models of care and service delivery for patients.”
Wendy Lane, Director of Consultancy Services at Arden & GEM