How have we been involved ?
Impacts and outcomes of our support
As the company has grown and developed , Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber has continued to play a key role in supporting the company to navigate the nuances of the healthcare system .
“ Everyone remembers us being the ‘ Uber for doctors ’ back when we started , initially just for GPs in urgent care . But our business has evolved greatly since then . Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber provided us with a software tool for scenario modelling . That put us in a really great position , allowing us to understand if doctors are up for new ways of working , and how we can prove this in the quickest , most cost-efficient way to see if there ’ s a viable business there ? That gave us the foothold to be up and running .”
– Taz Aldawoud
How have we been involved ?
In 2016 , we supported the development of Doc Abode though our Proof of Concept programme , which nurtured new ideas and technologies through regulatory compliance guidance and marketplace analysis .
We then supported further development with a successful application to the Small Business Research Initiative ( SBRI ) Healthcare ’ s GP of the Future project . This provided intensive support as part of the Office of Life Sciences-funded Innovation Exchange to help Doc Abode prepare to market itself .
We have continued to support Doc Abode to evaluate and scale their technology , including through the inaugural Digital Health North Accelerator in 2020 , to facilitate adoption and spread across the whole of the North of England .
The advent of COVID-19 was particularly challenging , as there was a need for practices to have systems in place to triage and prioritise home visits . As the company has evolved and developed , we have continued to play an instrumental role in helping them to build their credentials as a supplier to the NHS .
Impacts and outcomes of our support
The funding from the Proof of Concept programme helped Doc Abode to run surveys and focus groups covering over 70 GPs and to launch a feasibility pilot . This provided strong evidence to suggest that the Doc Abode system was indeed capable of attracting a workforce interested in trying new ways of working .
Through Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber , the company successfully applied to Innovate UK ’ s SBRI initiative . An award of £ 100k was made to facilitate the development of a prototype version of the Doc Abode product which was successfully trialled in Leeds and Huddersfield through a partner organisation , West Yorkshire ’ s GP out-of-hours provider , Local Care Direct .
The Health Innovation Network ’ s Digital Health North Accelerator provided further support for the company with business case and value proposition reviews , as well as assisting introductions and conversations with potential NHS
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