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Background

Hypervine Ltd is a Glasgow-based company that focuses on digitising infrastructure to enable construction, engineering and facilities management companies to improve transparency, compliance, consistency, health & safety, recording and reporting; leading to direct and indirect cost savings while improving compliance and quality.

The company is developing a powerful, custom-built single comprehensive, secure and unalterable blockchain platform for the construction, engineering and maintenance sectors with smart contract functionality and analytical tools for more accurate asset and infrastructure management.

Challenge

Following a series of industry scandals that highlighted the need for strong audit trails for building work undertaken, Hypervine was looking for an academic partner to  investigate the use of distributed ledger technologies to trace the completion of work in the construction sector and manage compliance events.

Solution

Ruth Oliver, Business Engagement Executive at Interface, successfully matched Paul Duddy, CEO and founder of Hypervine, with Professor Bill Buchanan and Liam Bell at Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing. The Blockpass Identity Lab at the University’s Merchiston campus uses cutting-edge blockchain research to drive innovation.

Ruth said: “Hypervine Ltd and Edinburgh Napier University’s (ENU) School of Computing were a natural fit:  Professor Bill Buchanan is one of the world’s leading lights in blockchain technology and, with researcher Liam Bell, offers a wealth of experience in supporting businesses and organisations in the practical application of this technology. 

Hypervine is helping construction companies build faster, safer, and more cost efficiently by digitising the industry. Exploring how to incorporate secure methods of recording data in complicated supply chains and transactions is a key element of this. Partnerships with academia can propel companies onto the next stage of their development, enabling them to enter new markets, win additional contracts, and grow their business.”

Professor Buchanan, Director of the Blockpass Identity Lab, said: “The nature of the construction industry is that there are many stakeholders involved and, making sure that each part of the process is working as it should, can be difficult. A blockchain solution will aim to integrate digital signing into the key parts of the process.”

Liam Bell, who was the lead blockchain researcher in the lab, said: “The application of blockchain into the construction industry – where strong levels of trust in the process are required – is a natural one.”

The collaboration was supported by the Scottish Funding Council’s Innovation Voucher scheme, which Interface administers.

Benefits

Company – As a result of this collaboration, and the ensuing product, Hypervine has experienced improvements in the supply chain, new and improved products, increased productivity, and job creation, as well as the safe-guarding of existing jobs.

Industry – This collaboration has resulted in an innovative product research that has significant potential to disrupt the construction sector and improve safety records both in the UK and internationally, where there have been a number of disasters caused by improper construction .  Avoidable errors are costing the UK construction industry £21bn per year.  Through blockchain and smart contract integration, the industry can save time and money making the it more efficient while freeing up finance.

Follow-On Activity

In February 2020, Hypervine announced its latest contract, working with the European Space Agency to develop services for the global mining community.

Mining companies have to constantly adapt to ever-changing economic, environmental and governmental policies making easily accessible, high quality and up-to-date data vital. Obtaining the right information with the highest degree of accountability often takes months. Numerous surveys have to be cross-checked and compared on paper alongside satellite-sourced data, by multiple teams in different locations. Through the implementation of Hypervine’s technology, data for mining teams and their subsidiaries is clearly recorded on an unalterable ledger, removing the risk of small changes being magnified down a chain, resulting in potentially catastrophic yet avoidable dangers and miscalculations. 

It was announced (9th November 2020) that Hypervine is to be one of the five new cutting-edge tech firms that will join HS2 Ltd’s Innovation Accelerator programme. HS2 Ltd is the company delivering Britain’s new high speed rail network.  Hypervine will receive commercial and technical support, plus rent-free working space, as they develop their technology to help deliver Europe’s largest infrastructure project.  

Hypervine founder & CEO Paul Duddy said: “Being accepted on to the HS2 Accelerator programme is a significant milestone for Hypervine and as one of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects is a perfect fit for Hypervine technology.“

*A blockchain is a growing list of records or blocks, secured using cryptography and resistant to modification; technology which can reduce the risk of problems like documents being lost or actions not followed up.

Background

Vanilla Blush is a Glasgow-based medical lingerie business founded by a former nurse, Nicola Dames. The business specialises in garments for people living with a colostomy, ileostomy or a urostomy, which are all categorised as stomas. Approximately 102,000 individuals live with an excretory stoma in the UK, with around 21,000 individuals undergoing stoma-forming surgery each year. 

Having a stoma herself, Nicola embarked on her first business venture to develop a new line of underwear for females and males who have suffered from similar conditions. The Vanilla Blush unique underwear is carefully designed with those individuals in mind and comes in a range of colours and sizes with a built-in pouch to conceal the bag.

Listed as a Class 1 Medical Device, the Vanilla Blush garments are supplied to the NHS throughout the UK and are also exported to 18 other countries around the world.

Challenge

A bowel stoma is an artificial opening on the surface of the abdomen that has been surgically created in order to divert the flow of enteric or faecal matter into an external bag. The most common underlying conditions that may require the formation of a bowel stoma include colorectal cancer, diverticular disease, incontinence and inflammatory bowel disease. One of the most frequent complications following stoma creation is parastomal hernia which occurs when an internal part of the body pushes through a weakness in the muscle or surrounding tissue wall. The UK Association of Stoma Care Nurses recommends ‘belts/underwear’ ‘to aid prevention of hernias and offer abdominal muscle support.

Nicola Dames was keen to better understand the individual’s experiences of living with a stoma and usage of support garments. To do so, she appointed a Stoma Care Specialist Nurse who was visiting the nurses responsible for these groups of patients to get an understanding of what advice they give around two key issues:

Following a referral from Scottish Enterprise, Nicola got in touch with Interface to seek help in finding an academic partner to investigate the following:

Solution

Working with Ruth Oliver at Interface, Vanilla Blush was successfully matched with the right academic partner at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) to complete the first study, exploring people’s experiences of support garments following bowel stoma formation.

The Department of Nursing at UHI has a thriving health and well-being research group that includes nurses, midwives and behavioural scientists. The current research programme in the Department of Nursing is about physical activity in people who have a stoma. This programme is led by Dr Gill Hubbard, an accomplished researcher, behavioural scientist and Director of Research in the Department of Nursing at UHI.

Dr Hubbard has excellent research partnerships with the Colostomy Association and Ileostomy and Internal Pouch Support Group, as well as Bowel and Cancer Research. She also has a thriving Stoma Patient Advisory Group. Dr Hubbard’s essential expertise enabled Vanilla Blush to address the gaps in their evidence about support garments during physical activity, to reduce the risk of hernia in people who have a bowel stoma. 

Business Benefits

As a concept, brand and company, Vanilla Blush embodies both the patient’s perspective and academic enterprise, which is required for an ethically-based efficient business offering an economically beneficial service to the NHS.

Academic Benefits 

The key findings from this project resulted in multiple academic manuscripts and have been presented at various industry-leading conferences throughout the UK and Europe. The full publication is available here.

Background

Macdeck Landscaping is a decking company that has gradually moved into landscaping due to demand from customers for the additional finishing to complete their gardens. They specialise in decking, timber structures, landscaping and garden redesign with an innovative look to each project.

Challenge

The company conceptualised an idea and carried out some basic prototyping of their unique innovative product, a Landscaping Decking Construction System, created with the use of composite materials*. Composite materials can give the required drainage capacity and lack of corrosion in combination, in principle, with the right structural strength for the system.

It was Macdeck’s intention as a business to progress to the creation of a universal branded/trademarked Construction System product. The product would offer the ability to create natural landscapes on raised structures, particularly in flooded areas, and create a wider scope of vision for architects and town and country planners at a more economical cost.

Before this project could develop, a greater fundamental understanding of composite components’ performance in the product was required. At the time, it was not understood either how composite materials would perform in the proposed Construction System under different load situations, what their limitations would be, or what system parameters would be optimal to present a viable and safe product for mass market.

Solution

Looking for an academic partner to collaborate on this project, Macdeck contacted Interface who matched them up with the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) and the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) at the University of Strathclyde, via Strathclyde Links.

The use of these composite materials in a construction context is relatively new, and entirely novel in ‘suspended’ landscaping. A combination of expertise of composite material properties, experimental testing of composites, and structural modelling of composite structures is a unique blend that the two departments at the University – MAE and AFRC – could offer the company.  MAE was also able to offer the company a materials’ testing system as part of their specialist facilities.

The partners collaborated on the project to develop the new product by exploring the properties of the composite components, conducting a series of experimental tests, modelling of challenging performance scenarios, exploring the limitations of the system in terms of static failure modes, proposing solutions to the design issues, linking computer modelling and experimental data and using all knowledge thus generated to contribute to a coherent product technology portfolio.

The project outcomes helped validate the product under brand, as well as helping the company progress with its IP protection and certification, critical to its commercial success.

The approach used was unique and innovative as the two centres of academic expertise were able to bring value to the project that was more than just the sum of the two. The ultimate outcome of the project was a product with the specifications and performance characteristics founded on a sound fundamental scientific basis.

This collaborative project was funded by a Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface.

Benefits

Company:

The company will build on the results of the project; the experimental data, the model outputs and the recommendations, to create a better, safer, more marketable product based on scientific evidence. The expertise and the credibility of the research from the University of Strathclyde will provide them with evidence for future product approvals and marketing, increasing sales and generating revenues for the business.

University:

This project provided an excellent opportunity for the University of Strathclyde to engage with an innovative local Scottish company with a technical requirement matching both the expertise of the Advanced Composite Centre (in MAE) and the AFRC. The project aligned very well with the AFRC’s and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult’s (HVMC) strategic theme of Lightweighting: the technology agenda of creation of very strong but light parts and structures. The AFRC are currently building a portfolio of capability in this area, which includes developing joint capability in composite materials with the MAE. The University’s work will be acknowledged in all literature related to the System.

Economic, Environmental and Societal Impacts

The proposed product is an excellent example of innovation, enterprise and creativity in Scotland. The product, a new innovative Landscaping System, has definite export potential with sales worldwide.

Macdeck Landscaping, going further, plan to create a new company offering new employment in Glasgow in supply, sales and distribution to support delivery of this product to markets in the UK and abroad.

The product has the potential to change how customers, architects, planners and governments deal with flooded land and their ability to build on flooded land, enabling landscape design on a raised surface, lifting wet and continuously flooded areas clear of ground.

An initial positive for the environment is that, in normal circumstances, a raised patio would require concrete foundations, type 1 infill, concrete block, cement, brickwork.  All this can now be removed and replaced by a re-useable, more environmentally-friendly platform.

*  A composite material is a material made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties that, when combined, produce a material with characteristics different from the individual components. The individual components remain separate and distinct within the finished structure, differentiating composites from mixtures and solid solutions.

Background

Founded by electrical engineer student Dale Colley, Altitude Thinking Ltd is on a mission to tackle marine pollution by using innovative technology in rivers and canals, capable of monitoring water quality and collection of marine waste.

Challenge
Scotland’s rivers, canals and waterways represent an irreplaceable, high-value resource to the Scottish economy and make a major contribution to the tourism industry and biodiversity.

An electrical engineering graduate from City of Glasgow College, Colley was keen to tap into academic expertise to seek help in applying technology to tackle water pollution. He was looking for an innovative solution to develop, construct and test a prototype of a programmable drone that will be able to be deployed and subsequently safely navigate Scottish waterways and produce accurate, real-time reports on water pollution levels and in the future to remove litter and other pollutants from waterways using suction pumps.

Although Colley had no previous experience of drones or the marine sector, as an engineer he knew he could invent a device that could monitor water quality and tackle marine pollution.

Solution
The City of Glasgow College is one of Scotland’s largest Further and Higher Education colleges and the UK’s number one college for WorldSkills UK, which is a partnership between business, education and governments to accelerate the development of young people’s skills from national to world-class standards.

The College is renowned for its work in the areas of Nautical Studies, Engineering and Maritime studies and has a mix of skills, workshop facilities and expertise required for this project such as electronics, electrical systems, marine engineering, navigation and propulsion – under one roof at the college’s Riverside Campus.

City of Glasgow College’s STEM and Innovation Lead, Douglas Morrison had the necessary academic expertise and was keen to work in partnership with Altitude Thinking Ltd to develop, construct and test a prototype of a programmable drone. The suggested prototype will be a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) equipped with motors making it capable of being deployed to a Scottish waterway alongside a range of sensors and data gathering and transmission facilities, allowing it to report back on pollutants detected.

Most people think of drones as craft that fly in the air but his is designed to travel on the surface of rivers and canals to monitor water quality. Altitude Thinking hopes to develop it even further to have the capability to collect litter, cleaning up Scotland’s waterways and freeing them of blockages – rather like the little robot vacuums that can be programmed to clean floors.

This collaboration project was successfully awarded a £5000 Scottish Funding Council (SFC) Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface to allow partners to look at engineering development for subsequent drones with enhanced capabilities to remove litter and other pollutants from waterways using suction pumps.

This innovative project combines portability with pollution detection, as well as data gathering and transmission, allowing for larger models to be built up over a longer period.
 

Business benefits

An award of an Innovation Voucher has taken Coley from the design stage to making a physical prototype which, with the help from Scottish Canals, is currently going through field trials monitoring water quality in canals.

Academic benefits

Douglas added:

“Dale’s novel application and the way he has integrated them is what adds value and presents an opportunity to change how environmental conditions are monitored in Scotland. His long-term ambition is to support the clean-up of canals and rivers and with supported funding to commercialise it he anticipates seeing it on the market within the next year.”

“It’s a wonderful product and looks incredible. It’s really cool – like a water-bound batmobile – and I believe it will help us to have a better understanding of what is happening within our rivers and canals. What is particularly interesting about it is that it is very much based on a range of readily available sensor technologies.”

Additional impacts

This collaborative project has already delivered a series of successful outcomes associated with the mark 1 drone, its testing and ongoing reviews, modifications and future markets.

Altitude Thinking’s invention has been recognised locally and nationally for its innovative work when being shortlisted for the Global Game-changers for Young Entrepreneurs and made the final shortlist for the Shell Livewire.

Dale has also presented his recent work to her Royal Highness – Princess Anne on her visit to the City of Glasgow College.

Follow on activity

December 2020 – City of Glasgow College, in collaboration with Altitude Thinking Ltd, has been awarded £23,500 to support the ongoing development of a mobile device that will read and analyse water quality. The project aims to deliver a new prototype – Aquabot 2.0. This drone can be remotely operated on the surface of rivers, canals or lochs to monitor water quality. The grant was awarded by the Innovation Centre for Sensor and Imaging Systems (CENSIS) who are also contributing their expertise on engineering wirelessly operating IoT devices. 

Please note that Interface administers the Innovation Voucher Scheme on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council. All funding applications are reviewed on a case by case basis by the Scottish Funding Council, guidelines can be found here.

Background

Re-Tek, who provide refurbishment and resale of used IT equipment, was established in 1996 and is based in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire. The business has 45 employees in Scotland as well as partners in Europe, America and Asia.  Operating on an ‘incentivised return’ business model, they are leaders in the IT disposal industry offering re-use as a secure, environmentally sustainable method of asset retirement.  In 2018, Re-Tek extended the life of 200,000 used technology items for business and the consumer, therefore preventing the need for these items to be inefficiently or needlessly recycled or landfilled.

The company sources most of its equipment from medium to large-sized businesses and public sector organisations, and they aim to re-market as much of the material received as possible. Approximately 80% of all equipment received is refurbished and re-marketed.  Only equipment which is non-functional or has no market value goes to conventional IT recycling partners. Re-Tek’s facility has LED lighting throughout, a Biomass Boiler and a 62 Solar Panel Array, providing approximately 80% of their energy needs from renewable sources. They take sustainability and corporate responsibility seriously and work closely with WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) and Zero Waste Scotland.

Challenge

The project partners, Re-Tek and Enscape, were keen to find a partner in academia, specifically individuals or teams with expertise in recycling/reclamation of rare earth minerals and in precious metals recovery from electronic waste. This was to partner in a bid for a €166k tender across four countries in the EU, released by EU Life/WRAP UK, which was designed to identify collection models in phase one, and recovery processes in phase two for Critical Raw Materials (CRMs).

Whilst Re-Tek were confident they could deliver Phase 1 (identifying collection models), they needed to identify a project partner to help them deliver Phase 2 (Recovery Phase), as the extraction process would be quite specialised given the recovery materials. 

Solution

The Scottish Institute for Remanufacture referred Re-Tek on to Interface who, after putting out an expertise search to various universities within Scotland, was able to connect them with Professor Andrew S Hursthouse from the School of Computing, Engineering & Physical Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS).

Re-Tek and UWS were successful in their tender for WRAP and three years on presented the results of their collaboration at The Royal Society in London. The partners are still working together to develop their ideas and are currently involved in a Horizon 2020 two-stage bid. This has also involved Re-Tek and partners networking across the EU through a recent COST Action project co-chaired by Prof Hursthouse.

Benefits

The company received grant funding for approximately two years to support collection models underpinned by Circular Economy initiatives. This will increase the diversion of redundant IT products from traditional recycling and landfill and enhance opportunities for further employment and profitability, whilst income sharing with Social Enterprise partners.

Re-Tek recently won the Sustainability award, sponsored by The Scottish Institute for Remanufacture, at the CeeD Awards 2019.

Follow-on Activity

Whilst Re-Tek reuses approximately 80% of ICT equipment received, the remaining goods are sent to their Recycling Department for preparation before being sent to a downstream recycling partner for further treatment.

Currently, they only remove certain commodities from ICT equipment, e.g. memory, PCBs, hard drives, however they believed that there was a great opportunity to increase their revenues by fully disassembling equipment and segregating by commodity, e.g., aluminum, cables, plastics, etc., which would be advantageous to the recycling partner and should increase the rebate received.

A cost-benefit analysis was required, calculating the cost of disassembling various products and the calculation of the funds received from the recycling partner as a result of the separation. The company was also looking for suggestions for a re-design of the production space to ensure sufficient space was allocated to the disassembly functions.

Interface put out another expertise search to the universities looking for a collaborative partner for this project with the result that the company was allocated a student from the University of Strathclyde’s MSc Business Analysis and Consulting programme. The student provided business insights about the project.

Background

The Gorbals Community Group (Old Gorbals Pictures & Heritage Group) had approached Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) in 2015 seeking technical assistance with their project. They are currently working with many organisations and political bodies exploring the possibility of recreating an old lost Gorbals landmark monument, the Gorbals Cross clock tower and drinking fountain.  This landmark was removed in 1932/3 for the expansion and upgrade to the tram system. 

Challenge

Unfortunately, the original drawings and measurements that would normally be used to help recreate the monument were lost, and there are no other existing records or documents of the structure.

Solution

The group discovered, however, that there is an exact copy of the monument on the island of St Kitts, in the Caribbean, the only surviving piece of four originally cast. 

Stevie Anderson and Eddie Horn, from GCU’s School of Engineering and Built Environment, visited the replica through funding from Historic Scotland, to draw up measurements of the original tower, using state-of-the-art, innovative 3D laser scanning techniques.  They were then able to combine the laser scans with photogrammetry data to obtain higher resolution than is currently available from commercial sources. This visualisation process, partly funded by pooled Scottish Funding Council Innovation Vouchers* awarded to George Taylor & Co, a foundry in Hamilton, and Wireframe Immersive, a 3D visualisation company, will pave the way for a new and innovative interpretation of the previous landmark.

The two businesses that were awarded these Innovation Vouchers are quite different in terms of adoption of digital media and new technology. George Taylor & Co. (Hamilton) Ltd rely on traditional foundry manufacturing processes which have remained relatively unchanged. Wireframe Immersive is a digital media company whose products are almost exclusively created using cutting-edge digital media tools and techniques. This project enabled cross fertilisation of ideas and innovation between two very different companies and the use of the same 3D scanning and photogrammetry data to develop products for new and unique market sectors.

Benefits

George Taylor & Co

For George Taylor & Co, this higher resolution dataset of the existing monument will help produce accurate, detailed 2D technical production drawings and 3D printed models, allowing for an accurate costing and bid for future stages of the manufacture of the monument.

The company recognises the potential for new technologies investigated through the partnership could lead to new market strategies and improved business opportunities gained from the collaboration on this project, and, in the short term, are investigating the potential to manufacture scaled replicas of the Gorbals Cross monument to market and sell.

“Thanks to the funding from the Scottish Funding Council Innovation Vouchers, we at George Taylor & Co. (Hamilton) Ltd and Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) have produced an accurate costing for the replacement of the monument in the Gorbals. At the same time, we have gained a lot of knowledge about 3D scanning and printing which is an exciting and innovative technology. We worked well with GCU and would trust that at some point in the future, we will team up again”, said Douglas Kerr, Commercial Director, George Taylor & Co.

“George Taylor and Sons recognise the benefits of keeping in touch with the latest technologies. This project certainly gave the company an interesting opportunity to engage with university expertise and allowed us to investigate the opportunities for these technologies that we would not otherwise have engaged with”, noted Stevie Anderson, GCU.

Wireframe Immersive

Wireframe Immersive can engage with the 3D scanned data to create Virtual Reality (VR) simulations of both the past installation and potential future in-situ reconstruction of the lost monument. The use of VR simulations and real-time simulations from the 3D Laser scanned Heritage monument will raise community awareness and help fundraise for the future manufacture of the monument.

As a result of this project, Wireframe Immersive have employed a graduate student to look at the Heritage market as a new market, with longer-term full employment a strong possibility.

Glasgow Caledonian University

From the University’s perspective, the development of a project with two businesses made it extremely beneficial in terms of developing industrial links and maintaining insight into current industry practice.

Applying technologies in which GCU have developed knowledge and expertise to the benefit of the businesses also proved favourable in terms of staff development and creating teaching material (case studies) for students.

Giving real world examples of industrial applications of modern technologies has proven to be valuable for students learning the latest technologies being taught at university level.

The project partners are now investigating additional mutually beneficial projects, based on joint expertise and a new understanding of skills and technologies which were gained from working together on the Gorbals Cross project.

“Applying for the pooled funding allowed all partners to work together on a project that probably would not have gone ahead if single funding was the only option”, said Stevie.

The Community Group

The Community Group has benefited from the project by engaging with the University partner to realise the project aims and objectives at this stage. The ability to obtain the more accurate quotation from the Foundry partner, George Taylor and Co, has allowed a more realistic appraisal of the intent to reinstate the lost Historic monument within the local area.

They are now seeking to engage with educational institutions on this and other projects currently in the pipeline for the benefit of communities across Scotland.

* Up to four businesses can apply together to pool their Innovation Vouchers to solve a common issue.

Background

Flaér (a brand by Scottoiler Sport Solutions) are a new performance cycling brand established to launch their most recent innovation, the Revo Via, the world’s first chain performance system for road bicycles.

The Flaér Revo Via chain performance system applies micro-doses of a specially developed fluid to the chain at set time intervals during the ride, so no matter what the conditions, the chain remains perfectly optimised – all the time.

This unique system ensures maximum power transfer to the wheel, smoother gear shifts and a visibly cleaner transmission. The result – you get the most out of the effort you put in. Our extensive testing has shown up to 12 watts in power gains at the wheel – a figure which increases the longer the duration of the ride.

Challenge

A key aim with this product is to engage with professional road cycling teams.  Prior to starting production, Flaér were keen to conduct aerodynamic testing that would help them better understand the performance benefits of the Revo Via and establish what drag their system would create on a road bike.

Solution

Chris Simpson, the Technical Director at Flaér, contacted Interface when they were in this last stage of testing as they were looking to engage with an academic department with full wind tunnel facilities and associated expertise to carry this out. Interface was able to help him;

After putting out a search to various universities, Interface introduced Chris to Dr Richard Green from the Department of Aerospace Sciences at the University of Glasgow to access their wind tunnel facility and the related support the University offers.

Benefits

The project has since led to the creation of improved processes and improved, as well as new, products, with a resulting increase in overall productivity, products and turnover. The business has now also secured a UCI professional road cycling team (Orica-Scott) who they will work with for the next 3 years as technical development partners.

“Thanks to the work of Interface and their wide reach of academic contacts, we have been able to reach out to specialists who have been able to help us fulfil our project requirements. The response time, communication and understanding provided by Interface was outstanding. Their attention to detail and support was extremely valuable in our business achieving its goals”. Chris Simpson, Technical Director, Flaér.

The project has led to follow on work with the University of Glasgow where a Postgraduate student is carrying out computational work to add more detail to the experimental work that Dr Richard Green performed for them.

Background

Stuart Speake founded Soltropy Ltd in 2012 to bring to market an innovative solar thermal panel system.

Solar thermal heating systems reduce CO2 emissions by displacing the use of fossil fuels. According to the Energy Saving Trust (EST), a solar thermal panel saves between 230kg and 510 kg per year depending on which fuel it is displacing.

Most solar thermal systems have a separate antifreeze filled loop for protection against freezing and require a new tank fitted with a heat exchanger. When retrofitting, a perfectly good tank (usually copper) needs to be replaced. The Glasgow‐based company, Soltropy Ltd, has developed an innovative solution that allows the fluid in the panels to freeze without causing system damage, allowing the system to be set up to heat water directly, negating the need for a new hot water tank and potentially reducing the system cost by 50%. 

Challenge

The company was looking for academic expertise to provide solid data on the overall system performance.

Solution

After hearing about Interface at an event, Louise Arnold was able to put the company in touch with Dr Tadhg O’Donovan from the Energy Academy at Heriot Watt University.  Thanks to the University’s support, Soltropy was awarded a £5,000 Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface, which helped to offset the cost of the project.

The project is now finished with the software model developed. This has proved to be very useful to the company, indicating clear areas where the design can be modified, resulting in different characteristics.

Follow On

This collaboration lead to a grant of £6.5 K from the ETP consultancy fund being secured to build a prototype and carry out comparison testing with an incumbent solar thermal system.  Testing was carried out at the Heriot-Watt University Renewable Energy Test site with the installation of two evacuated tube solar panels.  One panel was modified to incorporate the Soltropy technology; with instrumentation installed to measure fluid flow rates and fluid temperatures so as to determine an accurate thermal performance for the duration of the project. The work was carried out by two Mechanical Engineering students, funded by student bursaries, as part of an MSc programme in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences. 

In December 2014, Soltropy, along with project partners Heriot-Watt, succeeded in securing Innovate UK (formally Technology Strategy Board) funding with a grant of almost £175k as part of the Early Stage Energy Catalyst.

Tests at Heriot‐Watt University have shown that the Soltropy system behaves differently from the “old style” systems and requires a different control strategy.  The main aims of the year long project is to investigate what type of strategy would be appropriate along with some new innovations to further reduce the cost of the system. The project partners have received a grant of £90k which will fund a Research Associate full time, and ultimately extend their collaborative project.

Benefits

Soltropy Ltd has benefited from the collaboration with a more optimised system through theoretical modelling.  It now has data to back up claims it will make when convincing potential investors and, ultimately, installers and consumers, of the superiority of the system.

The initial project brought the University increased understanding of solar thermal systems and gave them the opportunity to work with Soltropy under a larger funded programme to further develop the project.

As this system will be manufactured in Scotland and sold worldwide, the Scottish economy will benefit from an increase in employment and revenue.

“Interface has helped immensely with my journey from my initial idea to a validated tested product. They were the initial help in partnering us up with academia to help in taking it from this idea, through software modelling and then actual lab and onsite testing.”  Stuart Speake, Soltropy

“I can honestly say that without Interface I doubt that my innovation would have gotten off the ground” said Stuart after winning the Sustained Partnership award at the 2016 Scottish Knowledge Exchange Awards.

Updates

In June 2016, Soltropy were awarded the £100k Scottish Edge Higgs award.

Higgs EDGE is a special award aimed at entrepreneurs who have a company that has applied leading edge technology to an innovative product, or product under development in the Science, Technology or Engineering sector, which is potentially world leading and also has the potential for large scale global commercialisation.

Soltropy also received an Energy Technology Partnership fund of £6.5k to build a prototype and carry out comparison testing with an incumbent solar thermal system.

Two further projects involving Soltropy have recently been funded by the Innovate UK Energy Catalyst scheme:

1.       Reducing the Cost of Solar Thermal: Integrating a Novel Freeze Tolerance Approach with Flat Plate Solar Thermal Panels

2.       Reducing the Cost of Solar Thermal: Integration of Thermal Storage with Solar Collector Design

The combined funding for each of these projects totalled £200k.

Please note that Interface administers the Innovation Voucher Scheme on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council. All funding applications are reviewed on a case by case basis by the Scottish Funding Council, guidelines can be found here.

HAS Technology (parent company of CM2000), created ARMED, an Advanced Risk Modelling for Early Detection service which – through the development of a mobile platform – enables health professionals to be identified in a Service User’s home to ensure the right care is delivered at the right time. 

Their technology has been designed so that both Service Users and Care Workers are completely protected, for example, sending alerts when a visit is running late so that advanced action can be taken. The service evidences a range of Service User improvements, tracks the impact of interventions and helps assess customer satisfaction levels. Linking to ARMED’s Family Portal module allows Service Users and their families to monitor the care and gives them opportunities to answer questionnaires that can be communicated back to the Care Provider, Local Authority and NHS.

Challenge
ARMED records around 10 million community care visit logs each month, and also collects a great deal of data on the needs of Service Users. They approached Interface looking at how this data could be used to evaluate the long-term health of an individual, further supporting those administering the care, as well as those receiving it.

According to Brian Brown, Director of ARMED:

“We approached Interface because they have an excellent reputation for linking business and academia.”

Solution
Interface worked with ARMED to develop their brief, sending it to the most relevant universities and research institutions in Scotland. They received a number of notes of interest but decided to work with Prof. Bill Buchanan, Professor of Computing, and Adrian Smales, PhD Researcher at the Institute for Informatics & Digital Innovation at Edinburgh Napier University.

Thanks to support from Professor Buchanan & Adrian Smales, the business secured a £5,000 SFC Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface. This extra funding helped to offset the cost of the project allowing them to process large amounts of data which gave them the ability to assess the likelihood of the onset of illness. This enabled at-risk clients to be easily identified and closely monitored, thus reducing the need for medical interventions.

Follow-on activity

ARMED were so pleased with their initial project with Edinburgh Napier University that they wished to continue the relationship and, in collaboration with Professor Buchanan and Adrian Smales, developed a second project focussed on building a more robust evaluation platform. Their overall aim was to gather additional information on patients’ conditions, in line with NHS and Local Council requirements, developing predictive techniques which help identify those at risk. In doing so, ARMED’s technology is able to pre-empt expensive hospital-based care, helping healthcare providers across the world to save millions of pounds and improve the quality of service to vulnerable Service Users.

The detailed research and development work in both stages was undertaken by Adrian Smales, a Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University, and whose research work has been focusing on the detection of frailty using data from a range of sources. Adrian commented:

“We have a long-term vision of using data to detect the early signs of illness, and apply new methods that should lead to improved care and better outcomes for all.”

Due to the nature of the project, and to cover the cost of the research team who were needed to develop the state-of-the-art predictive tools, ARMED once more approached Interface to apply for SFC Follow-on Innovation Voucher funding. The Follow-On Innovation Voucher allows companies to apply for up to £20,000 of funding which requires to be matched with cash from the company. Thanks to support from Professor Buchanan they were again successful and received almost £20,000 of funding which allowed them to progress with the project.

According to Professor Buchanan:

“Currently, patient information can only be effectively captured in controlled environments such as hospitals, care homes or a GP surgery. This project has significantly extended the effectiveness of ARMED’s mobile platform and by applying our research into advanced predictive analytic techniques we have successfully incorporated patient focused data capture with real-time personalised feedback.”

Brian Brown, Director of ARMED, added:

“By working with the University the time to market has been reduced. The development of this new technology has huge commercial benefits and we expect to significantly increase revenue. It also strengthens our export potential. We expect both quality and cost savings benefits for our customers.”

Since working with Edinburgh Napier University, HAS Technology have gone on to work with the Digital Health and Care Institute (DHI). The objective of this project was to apply advanced predictive analytical techniques to the data captured during homecare visits in East Dunbartonshire in order to identify markers which are indicative of the early onset of illness. Leveraging expertise from ongoing work in Primary Care in England will accelerate the integration of the ARMED mobile application into the Frailty Framework in Scotland, providing a unique opportunity to mine data across the boundary between health and social care. 

This collaboration has already been hailed a success in the East Dunbartonshire Health and Social Care Partnership Care Inspectorate Report, where it scored 6 or excellent in the ‘quality of care and support’ category.  The report from the July 2016 Care Inspectorate told us:

“The people involved in the project were extremely positive about its benefits.  These included being more knowledgeable and aware about their activity, fitness and heart rate, and more informed about their general wellbeing.”

This is an example of how big data, machine learning and predictive analytics can be used in healthcare, and the collaboration between Edinburgh Napier University, the DHI and ARMED is an example of great Scottish knowledge exchange between commercial and academic partners.

With a proven success rate, ARMED has quickly expanded, deployed internationally, gained Microsoft recognition and created 5 new jobs, demonstrating how AI and deep learning can revolutionise preventative care. ARMED is an example of how SMEs can contribute to Scotland having a globally competitive, entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable economy. 

2020 Updates

In accordance with the Medical Device Directive (MDD), ARMED has been certified as a medical device and can now be used in clinical settings.

Brian Brown, director of ARMED at HAS Technology, said: “We are delighted that ARMED has received certification as a medical device. Technology has a huge role to play moving forward and with so much evidence to support the benefits of early detection, this places ARMED in a much more credible position, especially within NHS spheres, to help make a real difference.”

The ARMED clinical evaluation stated that a “proactive approach to falls is considered crucial” and “significant reductions in falls” have been observed in trials when a risk of falling is identified, and the risk is managed.

It also highlighted that evaluations to date have identified clinical trends in patient groups including dehydration, weight loss, restlessness nocturnally, muscle wasting and reduced grip strength, all of which can be monitored by ARMED.

Please note that Interface administers the Innovation Voucher Scheme on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council. All funding applications are reviewed on a case by case basis by the Scottish Funding Council, guidelines can be found here.