Case Study

AMPED PCR’s Revolutionary Food Safety Innovation

RedKnight is proud to announce it has supported AMPED PCR Ltd, an Aberystwyth-based biotech startup, in securing £14,132 of non-dilutive grant funding through the Welsh Government’s Smart Flexible Innovation Support (FIS) programme. The funding will enable AMPED PCR to conduct a feasibility study for its novel PCR laboratory (PurifAI), a cutting-edge solution poised to transform global food safety standards. As foodborne illnesses continue to pose significant challenges in today’s global food industry, AMPED PCR has made significant strides in addressing these concerns with the development of PurifAI, a deployable PCR lab designed to improve pathogen detection and ensure food quality and safety.

Challenge

Foodborne diseases affect over 600 million people globally each year, with Europe seeing more than 5,000 outbreaks annually. Common foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, Norovirus, and Campylobacter contribute to serious illnesses and even fatalities. Despite ongoing efforts to control these pathogens, the traditional methods for detecting food contamination, such as culture-based techniques, are slow, resource-intensive, and costly, which limits their application on a broad scale.

Additionally, the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is compounding the public health threat posed by foodborne pathogens. With millions of deaths linked to drug-resistant infections worldwide, there is an urgent need for more efficient, faster, and accessible diagnostic tools to combat these issues.

Innovation

AMPED PCR’s flagship innovation, PurifAI, is a cutting-edge deployable diagnostic PCR laboratory designed to address the limitations of current food pathogen detection systems. The system promises to revolutionise food safety testing with several key features:

• Rapid and Accurate Testing: Unlike traditional methods that take several days to yield results, PurifAI aims to provide highly accurate pathogen detection within hours. This fast turnaround will allow food companies to quickly identify contamination and take immediate corrective measures, reducing the risk of foodborne outbreaks and costly recalls.
• Cost-Effective and Scalable: The proprietary reagents used in the PurifAI system lower the cost of testing while maintaining accuracy. Its scalability and ease of use mean that companies of all sizes, including small and medium enterprises, can adopt the system without needing extensive infrastructure or specialised personnel.
• Deployable and Modular Design: PurifAI is a deployable laboratory, which makes it easily transportable to critical points in the food supply chain, including farms, processing plants, and distribution hubs. This flexibility ensures comprehensive pathogen testing across multiple stages of food production and distribution.
• AI and ML Integration: The PurifAI system will integrate with a cloud-based platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to provide real-time data analytics. This feature offers actionable insights and helps predict and prevent potential contamination issues, creating a proactive approach to food safety.

Benefits to the Industry

The PurifAI system will provide numerous significant benefits to the food industry, addressing several key challenges:

1. Improved Food Safety: By providing fast and accurate detection of pathogens, PurifAI allows food companies to mitigate contamination risks more effectively, reducing the likelihood of large-scale outbreaks and ensuring that products are safe for consumers.
2. Lower Costs and Increased Efficiency: With its automated processes and cost-effective reagents, PurifAI eliminates the need for costly external testing and reduces the overall time required for testing. This efficiency translates into significant cost savings for food producers and suppliers.
3. Compliance with Regulatory Standards: The PurifAI system will comply with international food safety standards, including ISO 13485 certification. This compliance ensures that companies using PurifAI meet regulatory requirements and maintain the highest levels of food safety.
4. Sustainability and Reduced Environmental Impact: The deployable and modular nature of PurifAI reduces the need for large, centralised, energy-intensive testing facilities. Additionally, the system helps minimise food waste by enabling rapid identification of contamination, preventing unnecessary recalls.

A Milestone in Food Safety Innovation

By securing the SFIS funding, in addition to investment from the Development Banc of Wales, AMPED PCR has been able to take crucial steps toward the full prototyping and demonstration of PurifAI. This support is allowing the company to fine-tune the system’s design, integrate essential components such as AI-driven data analytics, and ensure compliance with health and safety regulations.

Mr Ben Davis, Founder and CEO of AMPED PCR said, “The SFIS award has been instrumental in providing critical funding and shaping our innovation plan, aligning it seamlessly with our business goals. It has provided a robust framework for engaging key strategic partners, including DNA Software, G-Con, and Google, while paving the way for an expert consultancy from The Technology Partnership and HSE. With RedKnight’s invaluable guidance, we’ve delivered a clear and effective innovation plan, which we continue to refine as we move through the SFIS programme. Quality is at the heart of everything we do at AMPED PCR, and we look forward to working with RedKnight as we progress. We strongly encourage other companies to consider SFIS a powerful tool for driving innovation.”

As AMPED PCR moves toward full commercialisation, the company is well-positioned to expand its reach beyond food safety testing. The system’s versatility opens up opportunities for applications in other sectors, including healthcare, environmental monitoring, and biotechnology.

With continued support and investment, AMPED PCR aims to drive innovation in diagnostic tools, contributing to improved public health outcomes and fostering a more sustainable and efficient food industry.

RedKnight is delighted to announce it has supported SyncVR Medical UK Ltd and South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) with their successful application to Innovate UK’s Mindset: Extended reality for digital mental health competition. The win secures a grant of £231,484 for SyncVR and SLaM to develop the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-based, virtual reality (VR) application to support medium and high-risk eating disorder sufferers waiting for treatment.

Eating Disorders (ED), such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating, are serious mental health problems that can severely affect a person’s quality of life, and their families. In the UK, it is estimated there are 1.25 million people with EDs, and a disproportionate number are below the age of 25. People with EDs often suffer with other serious conditions, such as depression and anxiety that need to be managed simultaneously for the best possible outcome. Left untreated, EDs can lead to severe malnutrition, family dysfunction, relationship breakdown and sometimes, tragically, death. Anorexia is known to have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition. As a result, it is vital that ED patients have access to effective and potentially life-saving treatment in a timely manner, however waiting list times for ED treatment on the NHS are increasing.

Since 2017, SLaM has been developing a novel transdiagnostic service for emerging adults with recent ED onset known as FREED (First Episode Rapid Early Intervention for EDs). Patient studies have shown at 12 months nearly 60% of FREED anorexia patients returned to a BMI of 18.5 or greater, therefore showing promise as a service model for emerging adults with EDs.

SyncVR is a market leader for providing extended reality (XR) in healthcare including VR and augmented reality (AR). SyncVR’s novel XR platform allows the company to deliver its own applications and host third parties (similar to Netflix). SyncVR has created several successful mindfulness focused applications which are currently being used in over 125 hospitals across Europe, including 35 NHS trusts.

Mr Floris van der Breggen, Founder and CEO of SyncVR said of the success, ““We’ve worked with many innovation grant consultants across Europe, and in RedKnight finally found a partner who works hands-on, independent and creatively. OASIS is an example of a project in which the process from concept to proposal was incredibly efficient, partly due to RedKnight.“

In addition to FREED methods, OASIS will also be underpinned with mindfulness and dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) elements to provide a rapid, cost-effective and scalable technology. It will provide patients with useful coping and mood management skills to manage their emotions while they wait for therapy and support them in feeling more prepared when they encounter it. Furthermore, OASIS will help reduce the enormous economic burden presented by EDs, which currently cost the UK economy ~£9.4bn annually. It will enable patients to better self-manage their condition, in turn reducing sick days, loss of productivity due to absenteeism, and costs to the healthcare systems worldwide.

RedKnight is delighted to announce it has supported SyncVR Medical UK Ltd (SyncVR) and South London & Maudsley NHS Trust (SLAM) with their successful application to the Innovate UK Mindset Extended Reality (XR) For Digital Mental Health competition, winning the consortium a grant of £185,000.

The project, titled Auxilium, aims to create the world’s first mental health application to be used on virtual reality headsets for supporting at-risk patients waiting for mental health care. The novel application will be based on mindfulness and dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT) skills’ training elements, which have previously been shown to be effective for patients in crisis and suffering from mood instabilities.

“I started out my undergraduate research career transcribing interviews from patients receiving DBT in Dr.Linehan’s lab. Marsha’s passion is infectious, and despite only being at that lab for a short while- I had absorbed and carried that enthusiasm for DBT for years. I’m so thankful to be working at SyncVR where I have the resources to be able to turn my vision into reality and to have access to incredible leaders in the space to build this project. The UK has such a massive need for mental health support that it’s absolutely imperative that we empower users to take control of their own mental health and learn actionable skills that they can start using to better their own lives”- Ari Billig

In 2021-22, over 1.2m people in the UK were on a waiting list for community mental health care (up from 1.08m the previous year). The NHS also failed to meet its goal of getting 1.6m patients into “talking therapy” services, also called IAPT, which are aimed at treating people with mild to moderate depression (1.2m started sessions last year). These waiting lists enhance the sense of loneliness and frustration felt by patients. Alarmingly, 25% of mental health waiting list patients attempt suicide.

SyncVR aims to improve healthcare with its novel XR technology approach, which includes virtual and augmented reality approaches. These are underpinned by SyncVR’s proprietary XR healthcare platform, which enables the company to deliver its own, and host third party XR applications (similar to Netflix). SyncVR has created several successful mindfulness focused applications which are currently being used in over 100 hospitals, including 10 NHS trusts, helping patients to decrease pain, anxiety, and medication. The platform is also used for medical professional staff development through XR training.

The technology to be developed through the Auxilium project will go beyond other existing solutions by enabling users to practice mood management strategies in a relaxing and immersive environment. Auxilium will teach patients useful coping and mood management skills to manage their emotions while they wait for therapy. It will also help them feel more prepared for therapy when they encounter it and improve their overall healthcare experience.

Furthermore, Auxilium will help reduce the enormous economic burden presented by mental health problems, which currently cost the UK economy ~£118bn annually (~5% GDP). The application will enable people to better self-manage their condition, in turn reducing sick days, loss of productivity due to absenteeism, and costs to the health care systems managing patients with mental health concerns.

RedKnight is delighted to announce it has supported iAM Compliant Ltd with its successful application to Innovate UK’s Innovation Loan competition, securing the Chester-based SME £592,860 of innovation funding.

iAM Compliant was established in 2016 to provide schools and businesses with a one stop shop for premises, health and safety compliance, and cut through the red tape. The company’s novel platform offers a seamless interface and cloud-hosted solution that brings all the information users need into one central place. Having pushed the innovation boundaries from the outset, the platform is used by over 500 state schools around the UK.

iAM Compliant will use the innovation loan funding to extend the platform’s functionality to provide the world’s first digital tool for schools to guide them through the process of creating their own Climate Action Plan and help them become more sustainable. The platform will be supported by the development of best in class, accredited learning content.

Tom Moore, Founder & Chief Operating Officer at iAM Complaint said, “[insert quote]”.

In April 2022, the UK Government published its policy paper titled Sustainability and Climate Change: A Strategy for the Education and Children’s Services Systems. The policy supports a drive for all UK schools to be “zero carbon” by 2030 and announces long term and consistent policies and funding to enable this (in line with wider Government targets for the UK to be carbon neutral by 2050). The policy ensures there will be investment in training teachers in education for sustainable development across the curriculum, and in equipping colleges and schools to give all learners a connection to nature. The Government also commits to investing in adapting and retrofitting the school estate and the Department for Education commits to improving their building specifications, so that all new school buildings from 2022 onwards will be net zero carbon.

To support these ambitions, by 2025 every school is mandated to have a Climate Action Plan that will result in zero carbon status. Each school will have a trained staff member who acts as a Sustainability Lead and Climate Literacy Training will be offered to every school with sustainability embedded as a statutory feature of careers guidance.

The sustainability responsibility will ultimately rest with site managers (referred to as School Business Managers in schools), many of which manage their current compliance responsibilities disparately across many different spreadsheets. The biggest challenges for those managing compliance is that they are often reactive, limited by budget, resource, and time. There is also often a lack of safety mindset, not necessarily driven by the individual but by the myriad of regulations and legislation they need to interpret and understand. The additional sustainability requirements outlined above will add further weight to the challenge.

The technology and training material to be developed through this innovation loan project will provide a much needed, easy-to-use, cost-effective digital tool to support schools in complying with the new UK Governments strategy and helping them in becoming more sustainable.

RedKnight is delighted to have supported Waymap Ltd with its successful application to Innovate UK’s Innovation Loan programme, securing the start-up £990,580 to deliver the late-stage research and development required for its disruptive indoor positioning and navigation technology.

Waymap’s vision is to develop the world’s most accurate and inclusive personal navigation smart phone application. Rather than simply routing a user to a train station, imagine if an app could then route them through the building, underground to the correct platform, on and off the train, and all the way to the end destination. These are the truly end-to-end journeys that Waymap can make a reality. No other personal navigation app on the market has adequately addressed the great indoors, which represents a major commercial opportunity.

When discussing the success of the loan application, Mr Celso Zuccollo, Waymap COO said, ““This funding, and the continued support of Innovate UK, is crucial in incentivising businesses to continue investing in hard technologies that solve difficult real-world problems, like what we are doing at Waymap. This money allows us to expand our core technology portfolio further, creating a better product and ultimately a better experience for the users of our app. Given the product we are building, this not only means that we can better address a very large commercial opportunity, but also that we can create meaningful social impact at scale.”

Waymap was born out of requirements identified by the Royal Society for Blind Children. Through several focus groups, the RSBC identified independent city navigation as a key issue for children with visual impairments and tasked Waymap to develop a high-tech solution that would allow them to navigate cities as if they had no disability.

As a result, Waymap has developed world-leading core technology and a smart phone app that locates and navigates users to an accuracy of up to 1m and 10 degrees heading. In 2021, Waymap extended the functionality of its core location algorithm, to ensure the app operates effectively while the smart phone is carried in all the manners that a usual commuter would carry their mobile phone, for example, in their pocket, whilst texting, or in a bag. All of this is done with no physical infrastructure and no external signal required, meaning the navigation app can work indoors, outdoors, underground, and when the smart phone is in flight mode. Waymap’s unprecedented level of accuracy and ability to be used anywhere makes it a truly unique and game-changing proposition.

The Innovation Loan project will enable Waymap to deliver the late-stage research and development work required to finalise the product development. Successful demonstration of the proprietary technology will pave the way for market deployment within 12 months of project closure.

RedKnight is delighted to announce a successful application to Innovate UK Smart Grants on behalf of Futuresoft Ltd. The cutting-edge software-as-a-service (SaaS) company will receive £347,449 to develop its next-generation hybrid office visualiser platform, Focos-HOV.

The successful application means RedKnight has secured more than £10.5 million since launching in 2015. Mr Dayne Hodgson, Director at RedKnight said:

“We are thrilled that Futuresoft have secured this funding to support a game-changing innovation that will help address challenges we have all experienced over the past two years. We look forward to seeing how this exciting technology develops over the next 18 months and where Futuresoft can take it.”

The Problem

When the pandemic began in 2020, the tools and technologies that workplaces needed to operate remotely already existed. The main challenge was adopting them quickly and updating longstanding processes.

For some, remote work has created new job opportunities, offered more family time, and provided options for whether or when to commute. These benefits have made many organisations recognise that hybrid working is here to stay as we emerge from the pandemic.

However, the transition to a hybrid workplace is proving more disruptive than the move to remote work, with many organisations greatly underestimating the challenge. One crucial factor is that the technology needed to create a seamless hybrid office experience remains largely nascent, meaning there is a significant technology gap in the Digital Workplace market.

Immersive technology remains costly and impractical as it requires the use of hardware, such as headsets. While non-immersive technology provides virtual environments with no hardware requirement, current solutions only offer basic collaboration functionality. None currently harness the power of big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

The Solution

Futuresoft’s first-generation product, Focos, enables businesses to operate all their SaaS applications via one single cloud platform, reducing the user’s need to switch between various tabs and windows.

Focos-HOV will build on this technology, harnessing the data collated by Focos and integrating other data sources and AI/ML techniques. The platform will provide an on-screen virtual office environment, showing company members, location, and availability to one another for enhanced remote and office worker awareness. It will enable vital ‘unscheduled’ interactions between workers to foster creativity and collaboration and reduce unnecessary context switching and interruptions.

Testimonial

Futuresoft said of their Innovate UK Smart Grants success:

“We are excited for the future and how we may positively affect workplace productivity at a time when there has been so much change with working from home. It is great to see Innovate UK acknowledge our ambition and capabilities as a cutting-edge, innovative technology company by awarding us this grant.”

Helping companies access innovation grant funding is RedKnight’s core mission. Please get in touch in order to discuss a potential application.

RedKnight are delighted to have supported GeneFirst with its successful application to Horizon 2020, securing the innovative med-tech start-up and its 4 collaborating partners (two SMEs and two hospitals) over €2.8m in grant funding. In total, 144 applications were submitted to the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) competition, of which 8 projects have been selected for funding (6% success rate). The successful projects represent the most promising advances in therapeutics and diagnostics to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

GeneFirst’s project, entitled RAPID-COVID, aims to clinically validate its innovative multiplex technology in both point of care and high throughput (HTP) settings, which includes testing for SARS-CoV-2. Based in Oxford, GeneFirst provides simple, reliable, and effective molecular solutions to aid the accurate diagnosis of diseases and the improvement of patient management.

As of July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 11 million infections globally, claiming more than 500,000 lives. In response to the current outbreak, a rapid and definitive diagnosis of the specific SARS-CoV-2 is crucial.  A recent study has shown that 5.8% of SARS-CoV-2 infected and 18.4% of non-SARS-CoV-2-infected patients had other concurrent pathogen infections. Therefore, single target testing is not optimal; failure to distinguish between different pathogens may lead to unnecessary antimicrobial use, cross-infection of mis-grouped patients, and further spreading of the infection.

Simple, sensitive, and multiplex detection of all respiratory pathogens is technically challenging. In response to the need for faster and better detection of multiple respiratory pathogens, GeneFirst has developed a prototype using its innovative proprietary technology – MPA (Multiplex Probe Amplification). The prototype will simultaneously detect and differentiate SARS-CoV-2 as well as 30 other common respiratory bacteria and viruses.

GeneFirst’s assay will allow for accurate, cost-effective, and comprehensive diagnoses during the current outbreak, as well as future routine diagnosis. In this project, the consortium aims to analytically and clinically validate this assay on both high throughput and point of care platforms. This strategy provides maximum flexibility for screening and triage, allows better and faster care, alleviates pressures on healthcare systems, and improves patient recovery rates.

Dr Winnie Wu, COO at GeneFirst, said of the success,

“We are ecstatic with this outcome and all consortium partners are very excited to start the project. For an SME, securing this funding allows GeneFirst to further its R&D and to deliver these crucial diagnostics at scale and pace in time for the winter season. We have pulled together a great project team for the delivery.

We credit our bid success to the RedKnight team; without their support, we would not have been able to achieve what we did in the short time needed to submit the application. We found RedKnight to be professional and diligent, and it has been a real pleasure working with them. This is our first collaborative opportunity and I am confident that our partnership will continue into the future.”

Helping companies grow is RedKnight’s core mission. You can find out more about the types of projects we support here.

RedKnight is delighted to celebrate its 5th birthday with another grant funding success story! A successful application to Eureka Eurostars has secured €345,566 for the South Wales-based Compound Semiconductor Centre Ltd and its partners. The REDEEMA consortium also includes Glasgow-based Amethyst Research Ltd and VTEC Lasers & Sensors, based in Eindhoven.

The project, titled REsonant cavity DEtectors for Environmental Monitoring Applications (REDEEMA), aims to design and develop an inexpensive manufacturable (III-V semiconductor material based) resonant cavity enhanced photodiode (RCE-PD) infrared (IR) sensing array for monitoring greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. A paradigm in high sensitivity mid-IR GHG sensing, the REDEEMA sensor will aid existing analytical instrumentation in the intelligent field deployment of the quantitative analysers and in the determination of gas sources.

Many chemical compounds in the earth’s atmosphere act as GHGs, including water vapour, carbon dioxide, and methane. The percentage of environmentally significant trace gases is rising due to increased human activity. There is a critical need to track these changes to monitor the extent of global changes in the GHG composition of the atmosphere. It is also crucial to actively identify the sources of these emissions so that action can be taken to mitigate and effectively manage the releases.

In this regard, Amethyst’s RCE-PD incorporates a unique and revolutionary design, which will be used in the development of next-generation IR detectors capable of meeting the demands of a vast range of applications. The resulting gas-detection system developed through REDEEMA will significantly improve performance over nearest state-of-the-art IR detectors, opening many new opportunities with environmental applications.

Dr. Wyn Meredith, Director at CSC, said of the successful application:

“The Redknight team supported our proposal by taking ownership of the specific requirements of the Eurostars application process, allowing our own staff to focus on the essence of the technical and commercial proposition. This accelerated the development of the bid and ultimately was a key factor in a successful outcome in a highly competitive process.”

Helping companies grow is RedKnight’s core mission. For our assistance in putting together a competitive proposal for your business, contact us today.