Precision Health Technologies Accelerator: Driving innovation with a strategic location at BHIC
By Bruntwood SciTech
How shared facilities and clinical proximity drive innovation
The Precision Health Technologies Accelerator, PHTA, helps entrepreneurs turn life sciences ideas into working products, from medicines and diagnostics to medical devices and health apps. Based at Birmingham Health Innovation Campus, it combines laboratory and workspace with prototyping facilities, specialist expertise and support with accessing funding and commercialisation.
Led by Chief Executive Professor Gino Martini, PHTA works with entrepreneurs from the UK and overseas. Its role extends beyond providing space, connecting companies with the clinical, academic and technical resources they need to develop their ideas and bring new products closer to patients, sooner.
Connecting businesses with clinical and academic expertise
Birmingham Health Innovation Campus sits close to the University of Birmingham, its Medical school and several major hospitals, including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Birmingham Women’s Hospital. Businesses can also access multi-disciplinary clinical-academic expertise from across the Birmingham Health Partners ecosystem, as well as benefitting from University station which offers direct rail connections to Birmingham New Street and Birmingham International.
Developing a healthcare product involves more than scientific research. Companies need to understand clinical requirements, test their ideas and demonstrate how they could work with patients and healthcare systems. Reaching clinicians and clinical academics can be difficult for a small company without an established network.
PHTA helps entrepreneurs navigate the surrounding ecosystem and find the right expertise. Its connections include Clinical Immunology Services and Health Innovation West Midlands, opening up access to advice on product development, clinical trials and routes into the NHS.
“When you bring life sciences businesses closer to clinicians, academics and patients, conversations happen more easily. People exchange ideas, find the right expertise and start working together. That’s when being part of a cluster really begins to make a difference.”
Professor Gino Martini, Chief Executive, PHTA
Making specialist resources more accessible
PHTA includes Containment Level 2 laboratories, collaboration and event space and a Makerspace where companies can develop and prototype new devices.
Shared infrastructure can reduce the cost and time involved in product development. Equipment such as specialist 3D printers and microfabrication technology requires considerable investment. Companies can use these facilities and draw on the expertise around them without having to purchase and operate everything themselves.
Further capability is being developed, including sterile manufacturing facilities intended to support vaccines, injectable medicines and new cancer treatments. This will give companies access to different types of technical infrastructure as their ideas progress.
“Young life sciences companies don’t need to own every piece of equipment or have every expert in-house. Give them access to shared facilities and people who can help, and they can test ideas, solve problems and keep moving forward.”
Professor Gino Martini, Chief Executive, PHTA
The value of a cluster
Businesses at PHTA are already showing how location can shape growth decisions. Impli, an Imperial College London spin-out developing a diagnostic for women’s health, chose PHTA partly because Birmingham Women’s Hospital is within walking distance. The location gives its team access to clinical knowledge directly relevant to the product.
Samoco, a University of Birmingham spin-out developing a system for transporting emergency blood supplies by drone, has used the Makerspace to prototype and refine its technology more quickly and at a fraction of the cost of purchasing the equipment itself.
The region’s large and diverse patient population adds another advantage. Access to a diverse population and one of Europe’s largest clinical networks can help companies ensure medicines, diagnostics and treatments reflect the communities they are intended to serve.
PHTA demonstrates that the value of a cluster is not simply the number of organisations within it. Its strength comes from making useful relationships, expertise and infrastructure easier to access, helping growing companies find answers and maintain momentum as their ideas develop.
We are the Precision Health Technology Accelerator, and we are there to help inventors and entrepreneurs grow their technology effectively. What we are about is that you don't need a new medicine to live longer and healthier—it's all about the right treatment for you. Whether it's a new app on your phone to make you walk the 10,000 steps a day, it's all about helping those companies grow those technologies, or new medicines for that matter, to make you live longer and healthier.
So what we're trying to do with the PHTA and BHIC is to provide an environment where people can exchange ideas and knowledge. It's really important—I'm a great believer in what we call collisions. Collisions create ideas. Our key role, though, is to make sure they get connected to the right people, whether it's the right fund, the right clinical expert, the right academic expert, or access to some technology that we can provide. Our job is to provide that. We're facilitators; we're there to help those companies get those connections that make them able to grow their businesses.
You've got one of the largest hospitals in the United Kingdom on our doorstep, the QE. Behind that, you've got the Women's Hospital, you've got a brand new private hospital called The Harborne, you've got one of the largest medical schools in the United Kingdom, and of course you've got the University of Birmingham. We built it here because you've got access to young students—they could be medical doctors, there could be pharmacists, nurses. Like I said, with one of the largest medical schools on your doorstep, we have access to that raw talent.
The patient population here is about six million people, 53% of them from ethnic minorities. It's really important to understand that because when developing new medicines, new treatments, and new therapies, you need to have a very diversified patient population.
We're providing collaboration spaces, event space, we've got a makerspace where you can actually prototype your device, for example, and we have 18 what we call grow-on spaces—large laboratories, Category 2 laboratories, where anywhere between 5 to 30 people can actually be housed in those facilities. It's been designed to make it really flexible, to create collaborations, to allow those collisions to occur, to allow those people to meet each other and talk. It's just a fantastic facility—nowhere are you going to get that kind of resource all within one building.
