Supporting multi-award-winning AI company with global market access
Posted: - 21st March 2023
Copeland Clinical Ai (C2-Ai), a multi-award-winning healthcare analytics and AI company based in Cambridge, develops artificial intelligence-powered tools to help hospitals worldwide reduce avoidable harm and mortality, save lives, and make significant savings on operating expenditure (potentially millions per hospital).
In the UK, C2-Ai is focused on prioritisation of the elective waiting list, ensuring that patients are risk stratified on their individual clinical need. The company’s technology was named among the 10 essential digital health ideas for a UK COVID-19 national response by Healthcare UK, part of the Department for International Trade, for its ability to help predict avoidable harm and mortality and free up capacity in intensive care units for COVID-19 patients. In the UK alone the app has contributed to saving 455 lives in the last year.
Internationally C2-Ai’s technology is being used in 11 countries around the world, including the USA, with the AHSN Network and its partners supporting the company with global market access.
Supporting (C2-Ai) globally
By partnering with organisations such as the Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI), the AHSN Network provides companies the opportunity to exhibit products and services at leading health technology fairs. In 2020 C2-Ai were among the small group of innovative UK healthtech businesses to join the AHSN Network as part of the ABHI UK Pavilion at Arab Health. As the leading healthcare trade show in the Middle East, the show presents significant opportunities for UK companies to connect with buyers and clinicians in the region.
As part of the AHSN delegation, the company was able to benefit from a platform to showcase its technology to key stakeholders in the region, as well as benefitting from the advice, guidance and expertise of our partners, including the ABHI International team and the Department for International Trade (DIT).
The Yorkshire & Humber AHSN has since been working closely with C2-Ai, supporting the company to articulate their value proposition and business model to stakeholders and connecting them to the help they need to succeed in the region and further afield.
C2-Ai was one of the eight companies chosen to take part in the AHSN Network Digital North accelerator programme in 2021. The programme enabled the company to participate in showcase events to demonstrate their technology, while facilitating one-to-one introductions to key NHS stakeholders. As part of the programme, the AHSN also supported C2-Ai to co-develop a localised business strategy, strengthen relationships with the commercial teams in the NHS and co-create a narrative for adoption of their innovation across the north of England to support the recovery priorities of the NHS in the wake of COVID-19.
The Network has continued to help the company strengthen its export strategy through our partnerships with support programmes like the ABHI’s US Accelerator Programme and Innovation Hub in Texas. In 2022, C2-Ai were one of the 40 UK HealthTech innovators to successfully secure a place on the ABHI US Accelerator. The programme supports UK HealthTech companies with market entry to the US, with a series of trade missions taking place throughout the year to introduce them to key stakeholders across some of the largest healthcare systems in the States.
Impacts and outcomes
Following the partnership between the ASHN Network, C2-Ai Elective Waiting List Prioritisation System has been commissioned by NHS England and deployed at a number of NHS trusts in the UK, as integrated care systems prepare to implement elective recovery plans. Surgeons across several NHS trusts have been able to improve surgery waiting times and reduced A&E admissions after successful clinical trials of C2-Ai’s AI decision support model.
Following successful trials in three trusts and a cohort of 125,000 patients Cheshire & Merseyside ICB has extended the roll out to 17 acute trusts in that region, and the solution is now being rolled out in a third of ICS regions.
NHS reported results show the system helps reduce emergency admissions by up to 8 per cent, can free up 6,000 years of surgeon time, saves 125 bed-days for every 1,000 patients (potentially an additional 15 per cent of bed capacity) and could save up to £2.4bn for the NHS. A trust saw a 27 per cent reduction after six weeks of deployment and the NHS reported time saving of five minutes per patient per triage.
C2-Ai has also been identified by NHS, Department of Health and Social Care and DIT as one of the 10 ‘Elite’ AI Healthcare Companies in the UK. The system is championed by NHS-England, and C2-AI currently partners with big four consultancies, integrators and electronic health record companies globally that see the solution as unique.
Next steps
The C2-Ai system will soon be deployed in more than 30 per cent of NHS trusts and in Scotland, Ireland and Canada. The system is having an impact globally, was named by HealthcareUK as one of 10 Essential Digital Health approaches and selected #1 by the Irish equivalent of the NHS (out of 100 digital health solutions) to support their elective recovery.
The AHSNs are the people that can translate between your ideas, put them into context that the NHS people will understand and then set up meetings. I really can’t stress enough the value that that’s been to us and the value that it can be to start-ups. They’re there for a reason, they’re great at what they do – definitely use that resource as a platform to showcase your technology in the UK and around the globe.
