Perth firm to innovate in health care

Small business contest is a success

A Perth company is to be part of a new approach to helping the NHS in Scotland treat patients with health issues such as skin, diabetes and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

Digital Treetop Limited will work on the inflammatory bowel disease research effort after securing funding from a competition which opened up opportunities in research and development.

And there is potential for further success with more phases of the dermatological and IBD competitions to follow.

Companies involved are expected to come up with innovative ideas to meet the challenges and, where possible, take these to prototype and demonstrator levels.

Digital Treetop, which is registered at a Glasgow Road address in Perth, took up the opportunity in the procurement competition.

The competition could help address significant service challenges faced by the NHS and public sector organisations.

It was run by NHS Scotland and Innovate UK with a focus on small businesses.

A £1.35 million cash pot is being made available from Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government’s innovation and healthcare teams to support companies participating in these competitions.

The competitions are run by NHS Scotland in conjunction with Innovate UK as part of its Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) mechanism to fund UK business innovation.

Jim Watson, director of innovation and enterprise services at Scottish Enterprise, said: “Using open innovation means we can help with two of Scotland’s business and healthcare challenges – get more businesses innovating and find new creative solutions to patient care.

“We’re making excellent progress in encouraging more Scottish SMEs to embrace innovation to open up new global revenue stream opportunities for them.

“It’s fantastic to see Scottish companies securing more than half of the NHS Scotland R&D funding, but we’re keen to get even more Scottish SMEs involved in other open innovation competitions.

“We currently have 10 live competitions from City of Edinburgh Council, Carbon Trust and Stena Line on our website, all looking for innovative ideas to solve challenges. I’d encourage businesses to visit the website, read about the challenges and respond.

“Open innovation is a powerful route for SMEs to collaborate with large organisations and receive funding to develop their ideas.”