These ventures have been with Accelerate Cambridge for over three months and are either looking to finalise their product or close their first sales.
Africa Bio-Innovation Hub
Africa Bio-Innovation Hub is a knowledge and skills hub designed to accelerate the application of modern biotechnologies for crop improvement in African nations. Despite the fact that ~80% of sub-Saharan Africa’s food is supplied by small holder farmers, food insecurity remains a problem throughout Africa.
The activities of the new Bio-Innovation Hub will focus on up-skilling a new cadre of African scientists who are adequately prepared to drive scientific research and innovation forward in African nations. The hub aims to overcome several issues that researchers currently face, including lack of molecular biology training and resources, required to advance their own research programmes focused on crop improvement in Africa.
Aker Health Tech – SmartScope
Our start-up was founded to solve one of NHS’s biggest challenges; The NHS and endoscopy units have been struggling to meet the increasing demand for colonoscopies, resorting to expensive recourse such as waiting-list initiatives.
Endoscopists need over 300 procedures to perform independently (the longest learning curve for surgical skills). A single colonoscopy is resource intensive, requires an average 45 minutes to complete and 4-5 staff per session.
Our patented innovation focuses on building the next-generation colonoscopy device that tackles all these issues by integrating robotics and intelligent automation (IA). SmartScope is mechanically propelled from outside the body, not pushed manually.
Ancrypt
Ancrypt’s mission is to simplify the process of designing and verifying cryptographic protocols in order to save time and costs, and to guarantee the privacy of users’ data and the safety of IoT devices.
Our tool, Crypsis, provides an interactive environment with a graphical language that an IoT engineer can use to design, prototype, qualify, and prove the security of their protocol, without needing to be a cryptography expert.
Asothia
Recent surveys by the Wellcome Trust and Nature Journal found that better access to funding data is one of the central concerns for early career researchers today. There is a need for a centralised database and networking platform for funding and career opportunities in academia.
Asothia does exactly this. Through a sophisticated search engine, Asothia matches researchers to tailored funding opportunities, keeping you updated on new calls and events. By utilising innovative technologies and the most comprehensive grants database out there, we help guide researchers through the entire application process: from finding to winning grants.
AstroVista
We are a media company supporting children with wellbeing and emotional literacy.
We seek to address the mental health crisis facing children post-pandemic, with children facing long waits for support from services and increasing parental concern about how to support them. Our minimum viable product is a graphic novel and journal for primary school aged children that we are seeking to self-publish in Spring/ Summer 2023, with concurrent parental support online.
AutoAntiBody
Autoimmunity contributes to many diseases. Chronic fatigue syndrome, Long COVID, lupus, arthritis, cancer – the list is long. Emerging science suggests that autoantibodies that activate or inhibit G protein coupled receptors (functional antibodies) in a large number of diseases. The presence of such autoantibodies can be used for a diagnostic blood test.
Our company AAB (AutoAntiBody) Research is developing technology to detect and identify functional autoantibodies against membrane receptors for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. We are aiming to initially develop diagnostic tests for chronic fatigue syndrome (1% of the population) and then extend to other diseases with AAB against GPCRs.
Biospeak solutions
The idea of the business is to support and enable re-use and long-term sustainability of health and life science research data by offering FAIR Data Management solutions and products specialised in the domain of biomedical research.
Cambridge Bioelectronic Systems (CBS)
We are developing pre-clinical screening tools to bring down the costs of drug discovery. About 90% of in-vitro drug screening is currently performed in 2D cell cultures which poorly represent 3D biology. Additionally, animal models compare poorly to human physiology due to species differences. As a result, many drugs with limited potential reach the clinical stages, leading to over 90% fail rate at the clinic alone.
In effect, we are developing a tool to enable non-promising drug candidates to fail before they reach the clinic, improving patient lives and saving substantial amounts of money in the process.
Climate Proof
Climate Proof is the world’s first payment solution safeguarding carbon removal transactions from fraud, enhancing trust, transparency and accessibility to the voluntary market worldwide.
We facilitate a carbon neutral world at scale with proven cutting-edge technology, adding strong layers of security to prevent fraud. Bringing the physical supply chain and financing supply chain together in a sustainable format.
The Communication Practice
We give leaders and managers the confidence to have crucial conversations through online communication coaching with professional actors. The actor plays the other person in the client’s real-life upcoming conversation so they can prepare, improve, and calm their nerves before the real thing.
Communiverse
AI intelligence platform for web3 Communities. The problem is the lack of Analytics for communities around web3 projects (TG, Discord, Twitter).
The reason is web3 users are anonymous, so community managers/founders can’t use general analytical tools to see who is behind the crypto wallets and analyse their behaviour.
DearPlant
DearPlant is a two-sided vertical marketplace for houseplants, which provides environmentally friendly door-to-door local sales of houseplants. Houseplants sellers are still unable to sell online, meanwhile, the demand for houseplants is still accelerating following the pandemic. Most houseplants sold in the UK are imported from the Netherlands or Southeast Asia which causes high carbon footprint, excessive plastic packaging and harmful shipping for plants. Existing online marketplaces for houseplants, such as Facebook and Gumtree, do not offer targeted marketing, search tools or plant care instructions. Our business model cuts the shipping costs, creates a free market control of prices and develops a scalable network.
Fathom Cognition
An unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease diagnostics is for scalable, culture-fair cognitive assessments that are sensitive to the very earliest disease stages. 40% of patients with cognitive impairment are not detected by GPs. 99% of Alzheimer’s clinical trials fail because recruited patients are too far progressed. Fathom Cognition (formerly NaviCog) has developed novel virtual reality cognitive assessments that meet this need. We are a team of neuroscientists and neurologists that have translated frontline cognitive neuroscience understanding to design assessments that accurately measure the first brain function altered in Alzheimer’s disease: navigation.
Our mission is to enter both international clinical trial markets as well as clinical dementia diagnostic pathways within the NHS. Our vision is to help reduce the global burden of dementia.
Frozen Data
Frozen Data aims to empower web3 creators, businesses, and investors with analysis of data stored on the most popular blockchains.
We aim to associate wallet addresses with labels carrying valuable and interpretable information, which would help our clients take more informed and data driven decisions. Additionally, to unlocking a massive and unexplored data stream, we will leverage the inherent transparency of blockchain to provide wallet holders with access to all the information we hold about them. As well as the ability to compensate for their data as the markets shift more in the direction of customer privacy.
GetZero
GetZero is an educational platform to help young people and their families to decarbonise their home through a ‘digital twin’.
Linked to the curriculum and co-designed with students, the GetZero microcourse will provide the educational content, whilst the GetZero app will show a digital twin of their home where they can virtually test out emission reduction behaviours or new technologies, then bring them to life through a series of challenges.
HeartAID
Developing a device to treat heart failure which can be implanted by a minimally invasive procedure.
La Latch Club
Retail of innovative and patented ergonomic bottles designed to facilitate combined feeding, support breastfeeding by preventing nipple confusion and repairing damaged latching. To help those with disabilities resulting in lack of hand dexterity or requiring a large grip eg due to neurological condition, arthritis etc.
Lamina POP
Lamina POP aims to make dignified housing more accessible for the 1.2 billion people around the world that currently live without adequate shelter. Our novel construction system uses widely available materials to produce buildings that are simpler, more durable, and much cheaper than what is possible with traditional low-cost housing models for the developing world. We have completed over 15 projects with the Lamina POP system in Guatemala, both independently and in partnership with organisations like Habitat for Humanity, and are now focused on scaling up our operations.
leep
leep is building a job search and recruitment platform for the future workforce. Unlike traditional job search and recruitment platforms that only match businesses to job seekers based on CV and resume alone, leep matches businesses and job seekers based on three main sets of criteria that reflect the workplace preferences of gen z and millennial job seekers: social and environmental impact, diversity, equity and inclusion, and company culture. Our values matching framework makes it quick and easy for jobseekers to find work that matters to them, while also saving time and money for businesses.
MedAi
MedAi is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered comprehensive digital healthcare platform that will enable millions of healthcare deprived people across the globe to remotely access a range of healthcare services in their language.
Billions across the globe struggle to access basic healthcare services. Unattended health issues often turn into health emergencies and every year worldwide an estimated 180 million people are pushed to poverty due to out-of-pocket emergency health expenditures.
MedAi aims to democratise healthcare by allowing patients to access vital healthcare support anytime from anywhere and prevent this healthcare cost-driven poverty. Actionable clinical insights from its intelligent electronic health record (EHR) module will enable healthcare providers to offer faster diagnosis and recommend patients with tailored guidance for better disease management. Its analytics platform will guide health policymakers and investors to make more data-driven decisions. Its analytical strength will also allow it to deliver health education and promote healthcare products & services in a targeted fashion to bring optimal benefit for both patient and the provider.
We are running a small pilot that involves a research collaboration with a medical college and four private clinics in rural Bangladesh. We aim to launch the platform among 50 million Bengali speaking smartphone owners in Bangladesh and the Middle East by the second quarter of 2023 and expand to Hindi, Urdu, and Arabic speakers by the end of 2023.
Pebble (formerly Stream)
A mattress topper which uses machine learning and novel sensors to detect the onset of pressure ulcers before they develop on the skin surface to enable early interventions. It monitors patient movement and automates the documentation to provide a holistic solution for the prevention of pressure ulcers.
Providentia
Health services across the world are facing an identical challenge – how can we provide world class care to an ever-increasing population of cancer patients? Diagnosing cancer early drastically improves health outcomes and reduces treatment costs. However, whilst screening is an effective tool to diagnose cancer early, only 6% of cancers are currently detected within screening programs. A rigid one-size fits all approach to cancer screening is ineffective at diagnosing cancers in a diverse and variable population – a personalised approach is needed. Providentia aims to revolutionise how cancer screening is delivered by public health services, leveraging our innovative risk stratification platform.
SpaceChain UK
SpaceChain offers space-as-a-service for modern businesses, enabling companies to innovate new use cases using space products and introduces better security and sustainability for Blockchain applications.
SpeechAI
Our product, Hermes Phonorite, is an ultrasound-based AI-powered platform that enables a multimodal approach for researchers and industries to collect, study and exploit a completely new and unique type of data (proprietary and obtained through special algorithms).
Thanks to ultrasound imaging techniques on the tongue and other anatomical structures involved in vocal articulation has opened up promising scenarios that were previously unimaginable. The range of applications from language education/teaching to medical diagnostics to criminology and forensic investigation is very wide. We are establishing partnerships with the NHS, which has expressed an interest in our product which can help in treating patients with speech disorders. There are also expressions of interests from researchers and others in the tech industry.
SyncSupply
SyncSupply is a supply chain risk model system that can help automotive manufacturers mitigate suppliers’ risk in advance by finding alternative solutions based on AI & Blockchain.
We aim to help the manufacturers plan in advance before a crisis arrives, confirm a sustaining production capability and implementing the state of art digital techniques to real-world implications to solve real-world risk mitigation problems
tumchi
tumchi is a personalised nutrition startup on a mission to restore health and balance – for people and the planet. tumchi is a platform that combines microbiome analysis, dietetics, gamification, and machine learning to bring people’s diet back to balance without dieting. tumchi is digitising a personalised balanced diet and aims to make it accessible for everyone.
Turation
Reinventing manufacturing inspection for mass customisation.
Turation offers an AI-enabled quality analytics solution that adapts quickly to any changes in manufacturing processes. A single solution can be used in mass customisation, contract manufacturing and across several production stages.
It reduces the cost of poor quality, waste of resources, rework and recall rate, and increases yields prediction accuracy, production line speed and output. Making quality management in manufacturing more flexible and efficient and reducing waste, rework, and recalls
Tycho MedLink
Stroke is an enormous public health problem. The aggregate cost of stroke is estimated at £26 billion per year in the UK making this a major challenge for the future. We help stroke survivors improve cognitive deficits by using Augmented Reality (AR) technology to gamify the rehabilitation process, increasing capacity for them to regain independence in activities of daily living with affordable price.
Currently, there is no long-term training process for patients that suffer from executive dysfunction, which leads to patients adapting to living with their cognitive impairments. The short-term training process tends to be very intensive for the patients to cope. Moreover, the training exercises can be repetitive, and patients are easily bored.
Our algorithms can analyse the results and suggest suitable levels and tasks to patients; therefore, avoiding boredom or frustration.
Virtual Scientia
Transform Life-Sciences and Healthcare Sectors using AI, AR and MR advanced technologies.
The life-sciences and healthcare sectors require highly skilled specialist practical education and training at both university and industry level. This is often very costly to obtain with training inefficiencies, limited access to tutors & laboratory space and constraints on equipment availability which can affect the quality control process in industry.
Virtual Scientia is on a mission to provide specialist practical training using a photorealistic, immersive, and interactive virtual lab simulator to help train the workforce and students to increase skills, knowledge, and confidence.
The Virtual Scientist platform uses 2D and 3D computer generated imagery (CGI), laser-scanned equipment for photorealism, AI and augmented and mixed reality for an immersive experience with patent-pending advanced technologies. Digital twins of real lab equipment allow users to undertake simulations of protocols such as cloning, immunofluorescence and ECG.
Initially targeted at the life-sciences and healthcare sectors, the platform will have later applications in other practical-based sectors. Virtual Scientia aims to transform practical skills education & training for our immersive digital future.
Vuala
Vuala is a company working to disrupt the food waste collection industry with innovation. Our innovation automatically sorts out food waste from other waste and turn them into raw material for energy production within hours on site. In doing so, we save 95% labour and logistic cost, 95% CO2 emission while providing cheaper, faster, and cleaner service. Our mission is to reduce 100 million tonnes CO2 in 10 years.
Wander out Wild
Wander out Wild will be an aggregator platform business connecting wilderness-based companies in Southern and East Africa to the UK market. Think Airbnb, but specifically for safari operators, camps and lodges that run nature-based activities and experiences. Each operator will be carefully selected for the platform to give users an authentic and safe experience that they would likely only be able to find if they had a local recommendation.
