̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - start ups

New initiative to promote innovation in the Greater Cambridge area

skbf2 — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 12:51:02 +0000

Innovate Cambridge is an initiative to create an inclusive vision for the future of Cambridge and its innovation ecosystem. ̽��ֱ��initiative was launched in September 2022 by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise and Cambridge Innovation Capital. Organisations that have signed up to its charter include local government, start-ups, universities, science parks and investors. As well as announcing its first 100 signatories, Innovate Cambridge has also appointed an Executive Director and established a steering committee.

Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of festival and online platform CogX and a UK government advisor, has been appointed Innovate Cambridge’s Executive Director and the Rt Hon. Lord Willetts as Chair of its Steering Committee. Other members of the Steering Committee include Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Yvonne Barnett, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation for Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, Shaun Grady, AstraZeneca’s Senior Vice-President Business Development Operations and Robert Pollock, Chief Executive of Cambridge City Council.

Cambridge has been a global leader in innovation for decades, with its two universities, thriving start-up community, global businesses and strong investment network. But, “standing still is not an option,” said Diarmuid O’Brien, CEO of Cambridge Enterprise: “Many cities and regions across the world are rapidly getting organised to secure their futures. We must learn from and build on their experiences.”

̽��ֱ��next step, according to Michael Anstey, Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, is for the signatories to the Charter, “to come together to define, and then implement, an inclusive, forward-looking vision for the ecosystem, which ensures the City continues to innovate, compete, and deliver impact on a global scale well into the future.”

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Cambridge has made a difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. A constant source of new ideas and innovations, the Cambridge innovation ecosystem spawns new ideas, technologies and insights that change the way we live and learn. ̽��ֱ��charter is a really exciting next step in the development of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem, bringing together key organisations and people to help shape the future of Greater Cambridge and ensure that together we continue to contribute to society.”

Read about some of the Cambridge start-ups that are having an impact in the UK and around the world here.

100 organisations, including AstraZeneca, Microsoft and Arm, have signed up to a new charter to boost the Cambridge innovation ecosystem and help it address global challenges, announced Innovate Cambridge today (8 December 2022).

̽��ֱ��charter is a really exciting next step in the development of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem, bringing together key organisations and people to help shape the future of Greater Cambridge and ensure that together we continue to contribute to society.

Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations

Innovate Cambridge

Tabitha Goldstaub, Innovate Cambridge’s Executive Director

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Born in Cambridge: Meet 10 ̽��ֱ�� spinouts

skbf2 — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 12:37:02 +0000

10 ̽��ֱ�� spinouts that are having an impact in the UK and around the world.

̽��ֱ��life of Pi: Ten years of Raspberry Pi

sc604 — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 16:57:58 +0000

̽��ֱ��most successful computer ever to come out of the UK celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

New book highlights how small biotech companies are outperforming big pharma

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 12:33:43 +0000

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster: ̽��ֱ��Business of Biotechnology, published today, shows how the small, inexperienced entrepreneurial companies making up the biotech industry have created more life-changing medicines than all of the large pharmaceutical companies combined.

̽��ֱ��book, published by Oxford ̽��ֱ�� Press, was written by Cambridge Judge Business School Associate Professor Nektarios Oraiopoulos, biotechnology entrepreneur Dr Lisa Drakeman, and Cambridge Judge Fellow Donald Drakeman.

From Breakthrough to Blockbuster describes how academic researchers and investors have worked together over the past half-century to create an industry consisting of thousands of small entrepreneurial companies, most with fewer than 50 employees.

̽��ֱ��book’s surprising discovery is that despite the high cost of drug development and the complex regulatory environment, the biotech industry’s ability to tolerate and manage risk outweighs the pharmaceutical industry’s advantages of scale, scope, experience, and massive resources.

̽��ֱ��story of how these small entrepreneurial companies have discovered most of the important new medicines while spending less than the highly experienced pharmaceutical industry can provide valuable insights for any industry seeking to innovate in uncertain and ambiguous conditions, the authors say.

̽��ֱ��book also provides practical insights such as how entrepreneurs should describe their companies to investors.

As Oraiopoulos explains: “ ̽��ֱ��driving force was to bring together the complex reality of running a biotech company with the insights offered by the academic literature.”

̽��ֱ��book is designed for a wide range of audiences including students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers. Stefan Scholtes, also from Cambridge Judge Business School, wrote about the book: “How is it possible that a few thousand small companies, many of them short-lived, can out-compete the mighty pharma majors at their own game? Understanding this puzzle is of fundamental importance for industry leaders and policymakers alike.”

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Biotech firms have developed nearly 40% more of key treatments for unmet medical needs, says a new book co-authored by Cambridge researchers.

Morsa Images

Scientist working in lab

Yes

Green tech startups see boost in patents and investment when partnering with government – study

fpjl2 — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 10:02:11 +0000

Latest research on hundreds of new green technology companies in the US shows the patenting activity of a startup climbs by over 73% on average every time they collaborate with a government agency on “cleantech” development – from next-generation solar cells to new energy storage materials.

̽��ֱ��study also found that every time a cleantech startup licensed a technology developed by a government agency, the company secured – on average – more than double the amount of financing deals when compared to similar startups: a 155% increase one year after taking out a licence.

Collaboration with universities and private firms are a familiar path for many startups, yet government partnerships are significantly undervalued when it comes to green technologies, say researchers.

While the role of public-private partnerships in sectors such as biotech and IT is well known, they say that – until now – there has been a lack of data on the effectiveness of these alliances in cleantech. ̽��ֱ��study is published in the journal Research Policy.

“Our findings suggest that some of the signs commonly used to track innovation and business success, such as patents and financing, increase when new cleantech companies partner with US government departments or labs,” said study co-author Laura Diaz Anadon, Professor of Climate Change Policy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Prof Claudia Doblinger, study first author from the Technical ̽��ֱ�� of Munich, said: “Government research laboratories have a major role to play in the climate challenge but also the growth of small businesses – twin objectives at the heart of many policy discussions, such as the Green New Deal in the United States.”

̽��ֱ��researchers built a new dataset of 657 US cleantech startups and the more than 2,000 partnerships those companies established between 2008 and 2012, to gauge the different outcomes for private and public alliances.

Around 66% of the startups were less than five years old in 2008, with the remaining 34% commencing during the selected study period. ̽��ֱ��research included companies across the sustainable sector: from wind to marine power, and recycling to batteries.

In addition to the benefits seen in patenting and investment, researchers also found that alliances with some of the stronger innovation outcomes were outside of major tech hubs such as Silicon Valley – suggesting the potential for building “regional ecosystems”.

̽��ֱ��National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), for example, part of the US Department of Energy and situated in Colorado, is a “prominent example of government organisations in the US partnering with cleantech startups”, say researchers.

A major player in the development of green technologies, NREL it worked throughout the 2000s with startup companies in “thin film” such as First Solar, which in 2009 became the largest producer of Cadmium Telluride solar technology.

Researchers point out that NREL has granted more than 260 licenses since 2000, and this study shows the value of government agencies such as this have on startups in particular.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors argue that the scale, facilities, and longer-term perspective of state agencies, such as the US Department of Energy and its seventeen national laboratories, naturally complement the nimble startups that can sniff out and adapt technological developments to market opportunities at a faster rate.

“Governments can and should have longer-term perspectives when compared to the private sector, and thus play a critical role in energy innovation,” said study co-author Prof Kavita Surana, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Maryland.

“Beyond grants and supporting the early markets, it is the joint development and transfer of knowledge that government agencies are able to foster with startups that makes a difference.

“As the US Congress and civil society prepare to debate the substance of the policies like the Green New Deal, facilitating public-private partnerships could well be an important, and relatively inexpensive, part of any forward-looking policy package,” said Surana.

Doblinger says that to forge lasting partnerships with emerging businesses, government agencies should test out incentives that support collaborative projects.

“Initiatives such as investing more in technology transfer capabilities, starting entrepreneurs in residence programs, or allowing government scientists to take temporary leave to work with a private firm, could reduce information asymmetry and provide incentives to researchers,” she said.

Anadon believes that the lessons from the study are worth considering in national contexts beyond the US. “For the agencies of any government to successfully work with startups, sufficient and stable funding is vital – along with technology transfer and communication support.”

“Our findings should be taken into consideration whenever funding for public research into sustainable energy is being debated. Cleantech that comes from public-private partnerships will be essential for meeting global climate and sustainability goals,” she said.

A bold response to the world’s greatest challenge
̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is building on its existing research and launching an ambitious new environment and climate change initiative. Cambridge Zero is not just about developing greener technologies. It will harness the full power of the ̽��ֱ��’s research and policy expertise, developing solutions that work for our lives, our society and our biosphere.

Collaboration between government and startups could help meet the climate challenge while growing small businesses. Findings could inform discussions on Green New Deal or any “forward-looking policy package” say researchers.

Cleantech that comes from public-private partnerships will be essential for meeting global climate and sustainability goals

Laura Diaz Anadon

NREL

Photovoltaic array at the National Wind Technology Center near Boulder, Colorado

Yes

Low-cost AI heart monitor developed by Cambridge start-up

sc604 — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 14:00:23 +0000

̽��ֱ��company, Cambridge Heartwear, hopes to use its wireless monitor to improve the detection of irregular and dangerous heart rhythms and reduce the impact of stroke and stroke-related mortality and morbidity, which affects 120,000 people in the UK each year.

Professor Roberto Cipolla from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering met cardiologist and clinical academic Dr Rameen Shakur in 2015, a year after Roberto’s father had died of a stroke. Their ongoing research collaboration has now led to the formation of Cambridge Heartwear, a company based on the Cambridge Science Park.

̽��ֱ��company’s device, called Heartsense, includes a multiple lead ECG, oxygen sensing, temperature and tracking device which can be comfortably worn by patients for early screening. Sensors are enclosed in a robust waterproof casing, and the data produced is far more sensitive than that from current single lead wearable devices, as the development team have used their knowledge of clinical anatomy and electrophysiology to place leads for maximal signal output.

This data is wirelessly streamed in real time to the cloud where adaptive AI algorithms are able to identify clinically relevant irregular and dangerous rhythms just as a physician would. ̽��ֱ��device incorporates multiple independent sensors, in order to produce more specific and sensitive data than current heart monitors can provide.

̽��ֱ��research challenge was to produce algorithms that can learn from a limited amount of supervision from the cardiologist. “Our aim was not to replace the cardiologist, but to give them diagnostic support in real time,” said Cipolla.

To encourage the adoption by clinicians the team ensured that the output of the AI algorithms also included the information commonly used by a cardiologist. “This was not necessary for the final diagnosis but made the system a little more understandable and explainable than typical Deep Learning systems, which are still thought of as black boxes,” said Cipolla.

NHS figures suggest atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common heart rhythm disturbance encountered by doctors, affects in excess of one million people across the UK. According to national and international data, more than 80% of people who either die or are left with severe neurological deficits following a stroke had an irregular heartbeat as the underlying cause. However, irregular heartbeat is often diagnosed only after a person has had a stroke.

There are more than 100,000 strokes in the UK every year, and it is the fourth biggest killer in the in the UK, with more than 23,000 deaths last year. ̽��ֱ��NHS spends £2.5 billion annually on neurological treatment and rehabilitation for stroke patients.

“It makes sense to pick up AF before someone has a stroke and put preventative treatment in place,” said Shakur, who was formerly a Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellow at Cambridge and is now based at MIT. “Unfortunately, the technology and clinical care systems we currently have in place aren’t really doing this.”

Heart rhythms are currently measured by an electrocardiogram (ECG). To use an ECG as someone is going about their daily business, rather than in a GP surgery, a device called a Holter monitor is used. This requires fixing 12 leads to the patient’s chest and carrying the cumbersome device around for 24 hours.

It can take as long as four to six weeks from the time when a patient is referred by their GP to when the data from the Holter monitor is analysed and an irregular heartbeat is detected or not. Additionally, a Holter monitor costs as much as £2000.

“If you’re wearing an ECG over a long period of time, you’re collecting a huge amount of data,” said Shakur. “Finding an irregularity among all the normal rhythms can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I wanted to automate this process, helping the patient to get a diagnosis and start on treatment.”

To solve this problem, Shakur began collaborating with Cipolla, a world leader in computer vision and real-world applications, and students from the Department of Engineering. ̽��ֱ��collaboration led to the founding of Cambridge Heartwear in 2017 and the development of the unique device and some powerful algorithms that can automatically interpret ECG data, which have an accuracy level in excess of 95%.

In 2017, the company secured funding to build and test 100 prototypes of the new heart monitor and to extend its AI capability. ̽��ֱ��Royal College of Art was also helped in the ergonomic design of the device. Heartsense will cost substantially less than a Holter monitor.

Clinical trials in Lancashire, UK have begun with patients enrolled from the primary care setting.

Inset image: (L-R) Roberto Cipolla, Rameen Shakur, James Charles

A Cambridge start-up has developed a low-cost next-generation wearable heart and cardiovascular function monitor which uses AI to diagnose heart rhythm and respiratory problems in real time.

Our aim was not to replace the cardiologist, but to give them diagnostic support in real time.

Roberto Cipolla

Cambridge Heartwear

Heartsense monitor

Yes

Cambridge and AI: what makes this city a good place to start a business?

sc604 — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 08:00:00 +0000

On any given day, some of the world’s brightest minds in the areas of AI and machine learning can be found riding the train between Cambridge and London King’s Cross.

Five of the biggest tech companies in the world – Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft – all have offices at one or both ends of the train line. Apart from the tech giants, however, both cities (and Oxford, the third corner of the UK’s so-called golden triangle) also support thriving ecosystems of start-ups. Over the past decade, start-ups based on AI and machine learning, in Cambridge and elsewhere, have seen explosive growth.

Of course, it’s not unexpected that a cluster of high-tech companies would sprout up next to one of the world’s leading universities. But what is it that makes Cambridge, a small city on the edge of the Fens, such a good place to start a business?

“In my experience, Silicon Valley is 10% tech and 90% hype, but Cambridge is just the opposite,” says Vishal Chatrath, CEO of PROWLER.io, a Cambridge-based AI company. “As an entrepreneur, I want to bring world-changing technology to market. ̽��ֱ��way you do that is to make something that’s never existed before and create the science behind it. Cambridge, with its rich history of mathematicians, has the kind of scientific ambition to do that.”

“ ̽��ֱ��ecosystem in Cambridge is really healthy,” says Professor Carl Edward Rasmussen from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, and Chair of PROWLER.io. “ ̽��ֱ��company has been expanding at an incredible rate, and I think this is something that can only happen in Cambridge.”

PROWLER.io is developing what it calls the world’s first ‘principled’ AI decision-making platform, which could be used in a variety of sectors, including autonomous driving, logistics, gaming and finance. Most AI decision-making platforms tend to view the world like an old-fashioned flowchart, in which the world is static. But in the real world, every time a decision is made, there are certain parameters to take into account.

“If you could take every decision-making point and treat it as an autonomous AI agent, you could understand the incentives under which the decision is made,” says Chatrath. “Every time these agents make a decision, it changes the environment, and the agents have an awareness of all the other agents. All these things work together to make the best decision.”

For example, autonomous cars running PROWLER.io’s platform would communicate with one another to alleviate traffic jams by re-routing automatically. “Principled AI is almost an old-fashioned way of thinking about the world,” says Chatrath. “Humans are capable of making good decisions quickly, and probabilistic models like ours are able to replicate that, but with millions of data points. Data isn’t king: the model is king. And that’s what principled AI means.”

Could PROWLER.io be the next big success story from the so-called ‘Cambridge cluster’ of knowledge-intensive firms? In just under two years, the company has grown to more than 60 employees, has filed multiple patents and published papers. Many of the people working at the company have deep links with the ̽��ֱ�� and its research base, and many have worked for other Cambridge start-ups. Like any new company, what PROWLER.io needs to grow is talent, whether it’s coming from Cambridge or from farther afield.

“There’s so much talent here already, but it’s also relatively easy to convince people to move to Cambridge,” says Rasmussen. “Even with the uncertainty that comes along with working for a start-up, there’s so much going on here that even if a start-up isn’t ultimately successful, there are always new opportunities for talented people because the ecosystem is so rich.”

“Entrepreneurs in Cambridge really support one another – people often call each other up and bounce ideas around,” says Carol Cheung, an Investment Associate at Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC). “You don’t often see that degree of collaboration in other places.”

CIC is a builder of high-growth technology companies in the Cambridge Cluster and has been an important addition to the Cambridge ecosystem. It provides long-term support to companies that helps to bridge the critical middle stage of commercial development – the ‘valley of death’ between when a company first receives funding and when it begins to generate steady revenue – and is a preferred investor for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. One of CIC’s recent investments was to lead a £10 million funding round for PROWLER.io, and it will work with the company to understand where the best commercial applications are for their platform.

AI and machine learning companies like PROWLER.io are clearly tapping into what could be a massive growth area for the UK economy: PwC estimates that AI could add £232 billion to the economy by 2030, and the government’s Industrial Strategy describes investments aimed at making the UK a global centre for AI and data-driven innovation. But given the big salaries that can come with a career in big tech, how can universities prevent a ‘brain drain’ in their computer science, engineering and mathematics departments?

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has a long tradition of entrepreneurial researchers who have built and sold multiple companies while maintaining their academic careers, running labs and teaching students. “People from academia are joining us and feeding back into academia – in Cambridge, there’s this culture of ideas going back and forth,” says Chatrath.

“Of course some people will choose to pursue a career in industry, but Cambridge has this great tradition of academics choosing to pursue both paths – perhaps one will take precedence over the other for a time, but it is possible here to be both an academic and an entrepreneur.”

“I don’t know of any other university in the world that lets you do this in terms of IP. It’s a pretty unique set-up that I can start a business, raise venture capital, and still retain a research position and do open-ended research. I feel very lucky,” says Dr Alex Kendall, who recently completed his PhD in Professor Roberto Cipolla’s group in the Department of Engineering, and founded Wayve, a Cambridge-based machine learning company. “A lot of other universities wouldn’t allow this, but here you can – and it’s resulted in some pretty amazing companies.”

“I didn’t get into this field because I thought it would be useful or that I’d start lots of companies – I got into it because I thought it was really interesting,” says Professor Zoubin Ghahramani, one of Cambridge’s high-profile entrepreneurial academics, who splits his time between the Department of Engineering and his Chief Scientist role at Uber. “There were so many false starts in AI when people thought this is going to be very useful and it wasn’t. Five years ago, AI was like any other academic field, but now it’s changing so fast – and we’ve got such a tremendous concentration of the right kind of talent here in Cambridge to take advantage of it.”

Inset image: read more about our AI research in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

What makes a city as small as Cambridge a hotbed for AI and machine learning start-ups? A critical mass of clever people obviously helps. But there’s more to Cambridge’s success than that.

In my experience, Silicon Valley is 10% tech and 90% hype, but Cambridge is just the opposite.

Vishal Chatrath

̽��ֱ��District

Cambridge Cluster

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

'Last mile’ fingerprints

sc604 — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 13:40:10 +0000

̽��ֱ��popular conception of fingerprinting often stems from television detective drama, when a perfect print – with clear arches, loops and whorls – emerges from a powder-dusted window to pin the crime on a tricky culprit, perhaps a well-dressed gentleman safecracker. It is TV fiction, after all.

In the real, developing world, fingerprints are usually not so perfect or so clear. So a start-up connected to Cambridge Judge Business School is using advanced technology to make identification possible for even those with far-from-perfect “last-mile” fingerprints.

“Most biometric systems in use today were designed by and for people in high-income countries,” says Toby Norman, co-founder and CEO of Simprints, which is developing biometrics to help identify and reach the 1.1 billion people around the world without formal identification – a technique that can help medical professionals reach, treat and record these needy people. “In fact, many people in developing countries who have laboured with their hands have burns, scars and worn fingerprints that make them far less easy to read.”

Toby is a former Gates Scholar who holds a PhD in Management Science earned at Cambridge Judge Business School. Cambridge-based Simprints was one of the first start-up teams to be supported by the school’s Entrepreneurship Centre Accelerate Cambridge programme.

“I did part of my PhD research among community health workers in Bangladesh, and was really shocked by the difficulty in identifying patients – many of whom had no formal government ID, had both surnames and family names that overlapped with many other people in their community, and didn’t even know their precise date of birth,” says Toby. “We think that the technology we’re developing can make a big, measurable difference in delivering healthcare.”

Simprints has just been awarded a $2 million “Transition to Scale” innovation grant from Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development, a programme funded by the Gates Foundation and other donors, that will help better reach these last-mile recipients. ̽��ֱ��grant – one of just 15 awarded out of 550 applications – will specifically be used to allow Simprints to scale up a maternal healthcare programme in Bangladesh, to track whether 2.56 million expecting mothers across the south Asian country are receiving proper ante and postnatal care.

With a matching $200,000 grant from Cambridge-based chip designer ARM Ltd., Simprints will also expand its capacity to integrate into other global technology systems around the world, allowing Simprints technology to be used in more sectors and contexts. Currently, Simprints technology is in use in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Uganda, Nepal, Zambia, Kenya, and Afghanistan.

In addition, Simprints received a separate Seed Fund grant for $250,000 from Saving Lives at Birth to develop the world’s first neonate scanner – based on research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge that found it is possible to use biometric fingerprinting on infants as young as six months old. Previously, it has been widely believed that biometrics are only useful once a child reaches two years old, so this new technology could help deliver vaccines and develop nutrition programmes for many more infants in need.

“We’re delighted that this new grant money will allow the company to scale up its exciting project at Bangladesh,” says Hanadi Jabado, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge. “From early days on the Accelerate Cambridge programme, it was clear that Toby had a vision and strategy for Simprints to make a real difference in developing countries such as Bangladesh, along with a realization that scaling up would be an essential part of that – and this is clearly now happening.”

Simprints tested its sensor against five other commercial sensors in low-resource settings, and found that it was 228 per cent more accurate than the next best in scanning the scarred and worn fingerprints typical in some parts of the developing world. ̽��ֱ��Simprints biometric system is optimised to such conditions: the sensors, templates which encode a fingerprint’s unique characteristics, and matching algorithms are all tailored to low-resource settings, backed by data from more than 125,000 fingerprints.

“In our field tests with 217 Zambian manual farmers, 84 per cent had some damage to their fingerprints,” according to a recent article co-written by Toby in the journal Biometric Technology Today. “In standard industry evaluations of system performance, error metrics are typically measured from biometric features captured in highly controlled laboratory settings from individuals employed in non-manual work.”

By designing for context, Simprints aims to overcome the common pitfalls faced by many technology companies in the developing world. “Advanced technology is only one piece of the puzzle,” says Toby. “Effective training, an intuitive workflow, and cultural acceptability are necessary for technology to survive and grow.” In the case of Simprints, these processes were envisioned with and by community health workers at non-government organization BRAC, the same ones who in the upcoming years will be providing care to millions of mothers across Bangladesh.

̽��ֱ��Saving Lives at Birth partnership, which was launched in 2011, includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Grand Challenges Canada, the U.K Department for International Development, and the Korea International Cooperation Agency.

̽��ֱ��partnership aims to find scalable solutions to address the 303,000 maternal deaths, 2.7 million neonatal deaths, and 2.6 million stillbirths that occur each year around the world.

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Cambridge start-up Simprints, awarded $2.45 million in new grant money, targets the developing world with fingerprinting technology to help deliver healthcare to 1.1 billion people with no formal identification.

We think that the technology we’re developing can make a big, measurable difference in delivering healthcare.

Toby Norman

Simprints

Zambia

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes