Winning healthcare sector contracts is often seen as a lucrative opportunity for health start-ups and SMEs, offering the potential for significant revenue streams and enhanced credibility.

These contracts can provide a stable source of income and open doors to further opportunities in the public and private sectors. However, the path to securing these contracts is fraught with challenges that can be daunting for smaller and less established companies.

Join us for an insightful event designed to empower health start-ups and SMEs with the knowledge and tools they need to secure new public sector contracts.

This event, delivered as part of The FWD Project is the perfect opportunity to gain advice and insights into how your health or wellbeing SME can successfully navigate procurement opportunities within the NHS and beyond.

In addition to focusing on the NHS, this event will broaden the discussion to include alternative pathways for health start-ups and SMEs, including insurers, care homes and private healthcare providers.

Through fireside chats and a panel discussion, you’ll also benefit from hearing first-hand about the experiences of other health start-ups that have successfully secured contracts and expanded their markets. They will be sharing their stories, the challenges they faced, and the solutions they implemented to achieve success, helping you decide which path will be most beneficial to your business.

Plus, there will also be the opportunity to have a one-on-one surgery session with The FWD Project’s Entrepreneur in Residence, Dr Becky Sage.

Speakers

Alex Leach, Deputy Director of Programmes, Health Innovation West of England

Alex trained as a nurse at King’s College London and then moved to the medical device industry, gaining over 20 years of experience with a range of companies selling and marketing products, ranging from consumables, implants, capital equipment, diagnostics, and generic pharmaceuticals. She has worked widely across the whole healthcare marketplace and has extensive experience of pathway redesign and business case development. She also worked as Commercial Manager for assistive technology charity Designability, leading on the commercialisation and exploitation of new products and services for adults and children living with disabilities. As Deputy Director of Programmes (Discover/Develop), Alex has a remit of bringing a whole system approach to matching innovation to locally identified health and care challenges by connecting and brokering relationships between innovators, patients, carers, industry, academia and health and care professionals and creating an ‘innovation ecosystem’.

Dr Aleksandra Love, FWD Project Sector Lead

Aleksandra is the Health Sector Lead for the SETsquared FWD programme and a mentor and trainer on acceleration programmes such as Innovate UK-funded ICURe. She is an experienced consultant with over 19 years of experience in the NHS, investments, technology transfer and consulting. Aleksandra supported hundreds of entrepreneurs to develop commercial strategies, navigate the health and life sciences sectors and raise public and private funding. Aleks will be joining us to provide 1-to-1 surgeries for attending delegates.

Dr Becky Sage, FWD Project Entrepreneur in Residence

Dr Becky Sage is Entrepreneur in Residence on the FWD programme, working with over 50 health and wellness companies, to help them create commercial and social impact with their innovations. She has worked in innovation, entrepreneurship, and impact for her whole career, spanning 20 years. She has been on both sides, being a serial innovator herself and supported other innovative impact businesses & founders through coaching, accelerator programmes and community building initiatives. She is currently CEO at Gamoteca, where she is helping to scale a learning experience platform built to enhance & scale human connection talent development, it is currently supporting learners in over 100 countries including helping refugees in Jordan attain meaningful work.

Tom Smith, Former EMEA Director – Global Partnerships at IBM Watson Health (2017 – April 2021)

Mr. Tom Smith is a seasoned executive with a strong background in digital health and medtech at a global level with extensive experience as a trusted advisor, growth and value creator with payors, providers & solutions and services organisations. He was EMEA Director for Global Partnerships with Watson Health at IBM (2017 – April 2021). He was instrumental in driving strategic direction and delivering revenue across Watson Health for Imaging, Government, Value Based Care, Oncology and Genomics. He orchestrated and spearheaded go to market strategies and their execution, rapid commercialisation and geography expansion. He has worked for various multinational corporations such as IBM, Lexmark, Fujifilm and GlaxoSmithKline where he led strategic divisions to deliver against growth imperatives. Currently he is the Founding Director of Humant, a tech company focusing on Accelerating Human Centered Innovation, CEO at Wanda Health Inc., (backed by EMV Capital), and also Commercialisation Advisor and Board Member at Neurovirt Limited.

Sam Bacon, SGB QA/RA Consulting Services

Sam works with many MedTech start up clients from incubators and universities across the UK including University of Bristol – SETSquared, University of Bath – FWD Programme and KQ Labs including Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) to develop and implement the following: Quality Management Systems build (QMS) to achieve ISO 13485:2016 Certification & Information Security Management System (ISMS) to achieve ISO 27001:2022 Certification. Sam also develope supporting documentation for Technical Files such as: GSPR evaluations to Annex I of MDR 2017/745, Device classification according to both the UK and EU MDRs, Post-market surveillance reports for many medical device ‘families’ and device labelling / artwork in compliance with CE marking requirements.

Full agenda coming soon!

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a comprehensive understanding of the routes to selling into the NHS and explore alternative markets.

You must be a member of The FWD Project or a member of Innovation Centre to attend this event.

Please email innovation-centre@bath.ac.uk to submit an expression of interest if you are a member of the Innovation Centre.