These ventures have just started at Accelerate Cambridge. They are at various stages of development, with some having already raised their first seed round.
Cain Medical (formerly HealthBayes)
The recent pandemic has accelerated the Government’s ‘Hospital at Home’ (HAH) initiative which pushes patients out of hospitals into community care to help alleviate the immense pressure placed on hospitals. Consequently, there is an urgent need to provide appropriate access to hospital-level monitoring (ECG, pressures), diagnostics (infectious diseases, cardiology) and interventions using point of care (POC) medical devices placed into communities. Such POC devices are utilised in post-hospital but also pre-hospital care, preventing some patients from going into hospital in the first place.
Cain Medical has developed a hardware and software solution to enable secure, real-time data links into hospital networks. Our product enables paramedics, GPs, nursing homes and other satellite sites to be supported by experts in secondary care such as pathology labs and cardiologists. We facilitate time-critical interventions and data-based clinical decision making in line with HAH’s strategic vision to improve patient care and clinical outcomes with more efficient use of resources.
We specialise in medical device integration for hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and pathology. Our solution facilitates the automatic recording of patient data from medical equipment to cut out inefficient manual transcription of data by medical staff, which is labour intensive and prone to errors. This puts us in the strong position to utilize our expertise and extend data transmission beyond the boundaries of hospitals into the community.
More importantly, our product decodes medical information in a standardised format which allows data from different medical devices to be integrated with each other which opens the door for more sophisticated machine learning and AI algorithms to explore diagnostic predictors. Another key feature is our high standard of security. We do not store any clinical data but pass them with two-key, end to end encryption. Information flow is further secured with a bespoke monitoring system that only allows data to pass that match pre-specified features (eg size and volume) defined by the POC device.
The long-term vision of Cain Medical is to provide an infrastructure that facilitates community-based contextualise healthcare by combining multimodal medical data with other social and behavioural determinants which will improve patient care and clinical outcomes.
Carbon Reset
Carbon Reset intends to help public and private organisations, NGOs, and individuals achieve their carbon offset targets through biological carbon sequestration – tree planting. We aim to plant millions of trees across Africa in the next few decades, reinvesting significant proportions of our revenue into local communities to improve infrastructure for sanitation, clean water, as well as providing educational resources, and technical advice on sustainable construction techniques and materials.
We are starting the project in Chad and will expand throughout Africa over the next few years. We are currently applying for funding at the Royal Academy of Engineering, and have received significant interest in Africa, and around the globe.
Cascade
Cascade is an app that harnesses the power of individual action, utilising the ripple effect to generate systemic change among communities, governments, and industries. We do this by combining climate research with effective behavioural science. We use climate science research to translate urgent environmental problems into impactful, practical steps that individuals can take. Behavioural science allows us to understand the ways in which we can consistently engage individuals to make these changes. We turn this information into engaging app features that will provide a tailored experience, giving specific suggestions, tracking progress, and building a community. We have five flagship features which creatively address the key areas in which individuals can have real impact: what we buy, what we eat, the energy we use, how we travel every day (eg cars and buses), and how we travel further afield (eg planes).
Ethin
Impact investment platform to help UK consumers invest in line with their values through their ISA and pension
FinCrime Dynamics
FinCrime Dynamics has a company vision to make the global financial system safer. We aim to do this by accelerating the adoption of new technologies in the fight against financial crime. Our software solution Synthetizor® uses synthetic data generation and financial crime simulations to allow financial institutions to improve their financial crime controls and prevent crime before it happens.
The problem of financial crime remains huge for society and is estimated to total around $1.45 trillion per year in lost output. Financial institutions are still struggling to fight financial crime despite spending of over $200 billion a year on compliance. Regulators are beginning to lose their patience over the inadequate control systems of banks. Over $14 billion of anti-money laundering fines were issued last year and the FCA recently issued a “Dear CEO” letter to retail banks warning them over their weak financial crime controls. The ability to fine tune compliance systems is hindered by the lack of collaboration within the industry. This makes it extremely difficult to prepare for criminal activity before it happens in real life despite other banks having knowledge. While many financial institutions are now exploring the use of machine learning to help fight financial crime, access to large amounts of high quality and very sensitive data to train models remains obstructive.
Our synthetic data generation and financial crime simulation engine provides a new opportunity to improve financial crime control systems. According to Gartner “by 2030 synthetic data will completely overshadow real data in AI models”. Synthetic data allows realistic synthetic data twins of real sensitive data to be generated quickly at large scales but free from the data privacy concerns.
Our product allows synthetic data to be enriched with simulations of labelled financial crime techniques. This enriched data allows banking control systems to be tested, measured through our benchmarking and then iteratively improved. Financial institutions can increase their protection with our growing library of known financial crime typologies as well as create their own bespoke simulations. Labelled typologies allow for better machine learning to now become a possibility. Further to this, we aim to build a collaborative peer benchmark of financial crime control performance which will also benefit wider stakeholders such as regulators, consultants and insurers.
Fincrime Dynamics was founded as Ealax Ltd by Dr Edgar Lopez-Rojas (CTO), an academic and financial crime expert. He holds a PhD in computer science and his research focused on fighting financial crime which gives us a large advantage over our competition. In addition, Dr Lopez-Rojas has consulting experience with the FCA and a number of financial crime systems companies. Following two grants from Innovate UK our product has been developed to an MVP stage and we are now prepared to begin Proof of Concepts with targeted financial institutions.
The team has expanded to include Stephen Quick (CEO) and Kellyann Ripnar (COO). Both have completed MBAs at Cambridge Judge Business School and lead the commercial elements of the business. Their addition adds valuable financial services experience, particularly in the area of digital transformation and strategy. The product team is driven by Daniel Turner-Szymkiewiczk (CPO) and currently consists of three contracted developers.
HealthBuddies
HealthBuddies empowers patients to take care of their health by providing them with relevant health information, decoding medical reports and sending reminders about individual health goals. All while integrating the system into the normal medical care of healthcare providers, saving them valuable time, and increasing patient satisfaction. It links the medical data in a user-friendly way with customisable medical dictionaries and videos, text, and email-based reminders as well as medical cost comparisons tools. This allows doctors to provide patients more individualised recommendations while ensuring reliability and accuracy of the medical information.
Patients can access their personalised health assistant via the HealthBuddies platform. The following are some of the features included:
- Central dashboard visualises current health status in an accessible way based on nudging principles of cognitive psychology.
- Option to add health data (health tracker, electronic health records, genome data, lab reports): These are presented in a simplified manner and will include comparisons to the general population and appropriate calls to action.
- Medical terminology is highlighted and behind a link are explanatory texts and videos in different languages and levels of difficulty.
- Chat function with doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, midwives etc.
- Selection of a general health goal and text-based reminder and motivation program.
- Reward system for improvements in personal health goal in cooperation with insurance companies, businesses and employers.
- US feature: Cost comparison and recommendations for the same treatment in different hospitals (based 2021 US Hospital price transparency rule), insurance recommendations based on personal health data.
Participating physicians can run the API system on the existing EHR software and, with patient consent, automatically send encrypted, personalised information pages to patients via SMS, email or printed QR codes, including preventive check-up reminders and health and lifestyle recommendations.
Hungry Bench
The Hungry Bench aims to become the world’s first producer of carbon negative street furniture. By building street furniture out of sequestered carbon and landfill waste, the Hungry Bench provides a sustainable alternative to concrete, wooden and metal benches. We’ve developed a bench that can store up to one tonne of CO2 emissions. There are 100,000 street benches sold on average in the UK each year. If every one of these benches were a Hungry Bench, that would be equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions stored, forever. The Hungry Bench represents a practical, measurable and scalable solution for public and private institutions to address climate change on a local scale.
MedAi
MedAi is an AI-powered healthcare platform that aims to correct the historic healthcare access bias in developing countries. Leveraging the high smartphone penetration, our platform will enable millions, with no or limited access to modern healthcare, to access basic healthcare in their native languages. Available AI-based diagnosis tools are biased towards English speaking caucasian patients. MedAi focuses on local disease prevalence and symptom manifestation of different ethnolinguistic groups, their medical language as well as dialects. Using its state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, the platform will assist patients to receive medical consultation, health education, and lifestyle guidance in their native languages. We already have a minimal viable product and have partnered with a medical college and three rural clinics in Bangladesh to test our platform. We aim to launch nationwide in Bangladesh within a year and expand to the middle east and north Africa within two years.
Niftpad
We enable brands to sell unique digital assets without writing a single line of code.
Through our white-label shop platform, brands can easily build fully customisable stores to issue and sell unique digital assets (NFTs). This allows them not only to diversify their revenue streams but also interact with their community in completely new ways.
Panoramic the magazine
Panoramic is an international magazine that seeks to disrupt the existing practices of journalism. Our aim is to focus each issue around one ‘concept’, selecting young writers from around the world who draw on their surroundings to comment on the topic at hand. In addition to these writers, we have interviewed numerous prominent figures such as science writer Tom Chivers, artist Mengwen Cao, film-maker Ruth Novazeck as well as partnered with the World Youth For Climate Justice for our issue on ‘Climate’. For every issue, we curate a diverse set of unfiltered views on one topic. We also work with a team of translators from Cambridge’s Modern Language department to allow writers to write in any first language. We have created a ‘collective’ on Facebook with over 400 keen young writers.
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.
You Okay, Doc?
You Okay, Doc?’s focus is to support the mental health and wellbeing of doctors across the globe. We are a service provider platform that provides support for doctors and have recently extended these services to nurses through You Okay, Nurse? In 2018, 80% of UK doctors were high risk of burnout and were two-four times more likely to die by suicide when compared to the general population. These statistics have been compounded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and are also echoed throughout the world, with USA and Australia reporting similar figures. Sick days in the NHS due to mental health during the pandemic are estimated to have cost £1.5 billion. The COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated a positive movement towards tackling the mental health issues of healthcare workers.
We take a multifaceted approach addressing this pressing issue and combine evidence-based solutions with practical services that are readily adopted by our end-users and across hospitals nationally.
We provide four flagship programmes underpinned by current research into peer support and trauma support, curated by leading experts and psychotherapists. We have partnered with organisations in the UK and US (including an initiative of Harvard University), a large corporate and are currently piloting our programmes in three NHS trusts and continue to build our network and community worldwide.
