UCLB News
Helicon Health wins Design Council Award
18 November 2015
Helicon Health, a UCL spinout company supported by UCL Business PLC, has been named as a winner of the Design Council MedCity Health Ageing awards for its new product HeliconLiveLong.
HeliconLiveLong helps interdisciplinary care teams manage the health of elderly people with multiple conditions more effectively and easily.
Speaking at the event for innovative up-and-coming tech entrepreneurs, John Mathers, Chief Executive of Design Council, said, “Technology can be a vital tool in retaining our quality of life as we get older. MedTechSouthEast has highlighted the tech talent we have in Britain, and we need to increase the convergence of tech and design to create usable, accessible, human-centred devices and systems that will help us all retain our quality of life as we age. This programme will teach our winners how the application of design can develop and shape their ideas to become practical products that people want as much as they need. It’s the combination of innovation and design that creates technology which can truly revolutionise people’s lives, as well as help save money for our public services.”
MedTechSouthEast has been designed for medtech entrepreneurs to help them develop effective, usable and commercially successful health technologies that can support older people or those with debilitating medical conditions to lead more independent lives. The winners will take part in an intensive accelerator programme led by design experts and medtech industry leaders. They will also be entered automatically into the AXA PPP Health Tech & You Awards 2016 – an initiative that aims to recognise, celebrate and showcase the best in personal health technology innovations.
About Helicon Health
Spun out from UCL in 2012, with the support of UCL Business PLC and Whittington Health, the company came into being as a result of a highly successful service development programme in North London, delivered in partnership with Whittington Health and CHIME (Centre for Health Informatics and Multi-professional education) between 1997 and 2012. The web software at the core of HeliconHeart was originally developed by CHIME at UCL. It was tested in clinical practice and its features have been refined over 15 years.
Helicon Health is committed to facilitating shared care for the management of long-term conditions. The company’s aim is to ensure that, as there is an increase in the number of patients managed outside the hospital environment, they also enhance the quality of care.
The Helicon Health goal is to help commissioners move towards a distributed service where the complex patients (10 – 15%) are managed in the hospital setting whilst the rest are either self-testing and self-managing, or being managed by the GP, an outreach service or their community pharmacy.
For more information, visit: www.heliconhealth.co.uk
About UCL Business PLC
UCL Business PLC (UCLB) is a leading technology transfer company that supports and commercialises research and innovations arising from UCL, one of the UK’s top research-led universities. UCLB has a successful track record and a strong reputation for identifying and protecting promising new technologies and innovations from UCL academics. UCLB has a strong track record in commercialising medical technologies and provides technology transfer services to UCL’s associated hospitals; University College London Hospitals, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the Royal Free London Hospital. It invests directly in development projects to maximise the potential of the research and manages the commercialisation process of technologies from laboratory to market.
For further information, please visit: www.uclb.com