INSIGHTS / News

A West of England partnership comprising five universities, the NHS and private investors have been awarded funding from Research England to deliver SpinOutWest – a new six-month pilot programme to strengthen research commercialisation and increase spin-out activity in health and social care.

SpinOutWest will be led by the University of Bath in partnership with higher education partners in the universities of Bath Spa, Bristol, Gloucestershire, West of England and SETsquared, QantX, Angel Investors Bristol, West of England Combined Authority and the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust.

Through sharing best practice, training and development, the programme will provide the knowledge and skills necessary for universities, which are traditionally less research-intensive yet are still a hotbed of new ideas and thinking, to embed new ways of working and a culture which supports spin-out activity.

Marty Reid, Executive Director, SETsquared says: “This project is a great example of regional partners bringing together their unique strengths to benefit the West of England’s higher education and innovation ecosystem. SETsquared brings over 20 years of research commercialisation experience and a track record of delivering innovation and investment training. Linking the programme to the investment community through QantX and Angel Investors Bristol from the start will provide invaluable insights to help shape these ventures into compelling investment propositions essential for them to get established and grow.”

Less research-intensive universities face unique challenges that can limit research commercialisation and spin-out development. Whilst they still have strong research which has the potential to provide new health technologies, devices and therapies – they simply don’t have the time, resources or knowledge to be able to consider the commercial potential of these innovations.

In practical terms, the programme will consist of Innovation Discovery Workshops to establish the commercial market for research or technology, Intellectual Property and Sector Review panels, development of shared ‘how to’ guides and standardised legal templates and joint workshops on building capacity for commercialisation activities.

Ben Woods, Director of Regional Development and Advocacy at the University of Bath, comments: “SpinOutWest is a much-needed programme to catalyse spin-out activity within universities which don’t have a developing track record in this area. In less research-intensive universities, health and social care innovations often come from social sciences, humanities and the arts areas rather than science and engineering, which require different approaches to packaging IP to create spin-outs. We look forward to working in partnership to adopt new and different ways of working to rapidly, cost-effectively and sustainably increase the volume and diversity of spin-outs and, most importantly, get important innovations into healthcare settings where they can have the most impact.”

Professor Richard Graham, Director of Research and Innovation, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, adds: “NHS Trusts face similar commercialisation challenges. Managers are focused on continuously improving service efficiency by adopting best practices, often from other hospitals, reducing the time they have on developing ‘in-house’ innovation. This can effectively result in outsourcing innovation activity to third parties such as the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme which supports individuals to pursue commercialisation of ideas. Clinicians/researchers have significant time commitments, further inhibiting innovation discovery. SpinOutWest will support our NHS Trust to unlock and capitalise on existing much-needed intrapreneurial innovation to transform patient care.”