Ultramed significantly increases the efficiency and cost effectiveness of NHS operations with pioneering pre-procedure assessment platform

Cornish digital health company, Ultramed, is improving the efficiency of NHS pre-operative assessment by up to 40% with its cloud-based data platform.

“In a conventional pre-op service, all patients come into hospital and have either a 30 or 45-minute appointment,” says Dr Paul Upton, CEO, Ultramed.

“Most of that time is spent collecting information and writing it down on bits of paper. We’ve transformed this arduous process into an online questionnaire that’s double A certified for accessibility, meaning it minimises digital exclusion.”

Once the patient has submitted their information, clinicians can use Ultramed’s built-in clinical decision support system to view recommended next steps, e.g. an ECG, blood test or X ray, and identify which patients are ready for theatre.

“One of the bizarre problems that the NHS faces is that there’s a massive backlog of patients, but unless they've been cleared through preoperative assessment, you can't book them for theatre. So sometimes you find that you end up losing operating slots because you haven't got enough patients prepped. By helping clinicians to identify patients who are ready for theatre, we help hospitals to optimise their theatre bookings.”

Ultramed also provides an automatic SMS messaging service for patients, reminding them of their appointment and what they need to do to prepare for their operation.

“Some patients don’t show up for their operation and others arrive having eaten a full English breakfast, both of which constitute a failure to operate. So a simple SMS reminder can be a powerful tool.”

“Bringing all these elements together, we’ve proven that we can achieve a 40% increase in preoperative assessment capacity with the same number of staff.”

Innovate UK EDGE support

In September 2020, Ultramed began work with Innovation and Growth Specialist, Natalie Collard, who developed a detailed growth plan for the company focused on sales, marketing, funding and scale.

“Natalie has worked almost like a detective in terms of spotting where the issues are and assigning specialists in her team that are best suited to the problems we were facing,” says Paul.

“Overall, Innovate UK EDGE has been extremely useful in helping us to optimise our financial position and making sure we press the accelerator as hard as we can without going too hard and then running out of money.”

Commercialisation support

Natalie introduced Innovate UK EDGE MedTech Specialist, Patrick Finnemore, who helped Ultramed to refine its sales and marketing strategy with a view to supplying to the NHS.

“Patrick identified that the company was perhaps a little too reliant on me to manage a substantial client pipeline, and helped us to focus on maintaining market share leadership during our rapid growth phase.

“We now have much greater confidence in our approach to selling to the NHS and a clearer idea of our international and domestic expansion plans.”

IP support

Innovate UK EDGE IP Specialist, Kate Butler, was next introduced to help Ultramed identify potential opportunities and weaknesses in its IP strategy.?

“We had an IP Audit, delivered by Innovate UK EDGE and the IPO in 2022, and Kate was able to reassure us that this was still sufficient to maintain our IP security moving forward.

“It was very useful to have that external expert guidance and it meant we could quickly move on to focus on other things.”

Ultramed will next be joining Innovate UK EDGE’s Scaleup Programme, where it hopes to upskill staff with a focus on sales, marketing and customer conversion.

“Overall, the support from Innovate UK EDGE has given us more structure than we might have had otherwise,” says Paul.

“When you get external eyes on your company – expert eyes that make suggestions on the ‘unknown unknowns’ – it makes it much easier to spot the gaps.”

“So having support from people that have really done this sort of stuff before and seen it in multiple other companies is really helpful.”

“We’re now in a strong growth position, we’ve won the King’s Award for Enterprise in the Innovation Category – and we’re looking forward to seeing where we can work with Innovate UK EDGE next.”

Innovate UK EDGE will continue to support as this MedTech innovator scales its pioneering platform, enabling hospitals to run more efficiently and support our NHS.

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