By Mark Gostock, VP of Health and Wellbeing Commercialisation at Ploughshare

I know that we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, and will probably continue to say it long after everyone has got the message: Research and Innovation are critical to forward thinking, forward moving, and forward planning. It’s been Ploughshare’s theme for nearly two decades; how do we harness innovation from government research to make a positive impact in the UK and abroad?

With the recent change in government there is a renewed sense of vigour to at least supercharge our activities at home in regard to industry. This is no bad thing. On the contrary – with the world as it is, there is a desperate need for the UK to be strong in its own capabilities when it comes to both research and also manufacture. Geopolitics aside, this is also generally a good thing to be proficient in.

In my arena, health and wellbeing, it’s even more important. The evident need to have a healthcare system that is more focused on prevention rather than cure is more pertinent than ever, in a system that I’m sure we can all agree is stretched to near-breaking point. Coming out of a global pandemic, I’d say that this is pretty clear. Better diagnostics are going to be a critical aspect of this transformation. Diagnostics that are on our high-street pharmacists and in our GP offices; diagnostics that we can take advantage of without having the need to go to hospitals that are struggling to keep their heads above the water.

Better support for research and innovation is an obvious need here. Without the research and innovation behind it, we simply will not find new areas of diagnostics that will benefit us in the long run. We need to see further support for the journey that is research, invention, and ultimately innovation. Stephen Webb of the Fabian Society argues exactly this. Make no mistake – the white heat of technology may have cooled slightly, but we are more than capable and able to get it back up to temperature.

We aren’t strangers to it in the health and wellbeing space at Ploughshare. Our work has, so far, yielded some fantastic results. Presymptom Health continues to innovate and grow, being a part of NHS testing, further clinical trials, and using AI technology to help create better diagnostics and therefore better treatment of sepsis. It’s a tool that has developed from a need in a battlefield environment to something that can and does help the NHS in diagnosing – meaning better patient outcomes.

But it doesn’t happen by itself. We have government support for this, of course, the research from the Defence Science and Technology Labs (Dstl) is critical here. But contrary to popular belief government money is not bottomless. The government’s magic money tree, unfortunately, does not exist. Instead, we need more collaboration that brings with it funding and expertise from both industry and investment partners, and this is where Ploughshare comes into its own: liberating invention into brilliant businesses, both new and existing, who can then secure private funding to take invention to impact.

Better and more innovative diagnostics is an area that has the potential to be injected into healthcare systems around the world – the market is huge. Financially, it’s a no brainer. Alongside this, the potential positive impact that this work can have is also simply massive – so I’d argue that morally it’s a no-brainer too.