Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland

21/11/2025

Good news from NI life science company PulseAI who have announced their application is now operational on the Samsung Electronics Galaxy Watch, featuring full, direct integration with the watch’s ECG sensor. This integration allows AI-ECG algorithms to function natively and in real-time, providing clinically meaningful insights that enable efficient remote patient monitoring.

This development marks a significant advancement in delivering advanced cardiac analysis through everyday wearable technology.

20/11/2025

Belfast company, Big Motive works with Health and Social Care Northern Ireland and the Health Service Executive in Ireland to support the design of solutions for some of our biggest health care challenges.

Design partner, Rebecca Walsh, talks us through a recent project and how it has made a huge difference to services.

“Children and young people in CHO8 (Midlands Louth Meath Community Healthcare Organisation) access assessment and intervention for a range of developmental, therapeutic and mental health needs through Primary Care, Children’s Disability Network Teams and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Families, clinicians and administrative staff identified several long standing challenges within the referral process. These included unclear pathways, duplication of referrals, long waiting times and services working in siloes, all of which contributed to delays and additional work for staff.

“Big Motive supports healthcare projects across the HSE and HSC. This project has been particularly valuable because the team has been able to measure early benefits within a short project timeline, allowing visibility of improvements beginning to take shape for both clinicians and families.

“The opportunity for this work emerged from a discovery process carried out by , Big Motive & HSE Spark Innovation Programme in 2024. Families, HSE staff and managers participated in interviews, research sessions and discussions that identified priority areas for improvement. One of the strongest themes was the need for clearer referral pathways, improved communication and more coordinated working between care groups. Supported by the HSE Spark and Big Motive, CHO8 established a multidisciplinary project group to redesign the referral process using a human centred design approach.
Read more here: www.hira-ni.com

19/11/2025

Innovate UK is offering up to £750 for UK businesses to attend 'ECS (Electronic Components Systems) Brokerage Event' on the 4 – 5 February 2026 in Brussels, Belgium. This travel support will allow you to discuss collaborative Horizon Europe projects, learn about upcoming European R&D funding opportunities and form impactful global business partnerships.
Closes for applications on 5 December 2025

Innovate UK is offering Travel Support of up to £750 for companies to attend Horizon Europe consortia-building events in Europe. These opportunities enable innovators to form new collaborative partnerships to help businesses grow by supporting companies who want to expand their networks across Euro...

18/11/2025

A full day one at London Life Sciences week and strong take home messages: “We are pro-science and pro-innovation across the UK, with a wealth of assets that recent investments must be laser focused on joining up to ensure success.
“We need to nurture diverse talent as part of the investment and celebrate porosity across the sector, while connecting cross-sector data and regulatory systems, providing clear access points and a soft landing pad for investment. We can unlock UK pension funds, and be less risk averse to optimise winning science,” said our CEO Joann Rhodes MBA who earlier took part in a session on the Future of Life Sciences.
This panel was focused on life sciences clusters and their importance in helping the ecosystem thrive. We heard from domestic and international clusters on the role they have in establishing partnerships, strengthening collaboration and supercharging global competitiveness.
The event provided a comprehensive view of what makes a leading life sciences cluster:
· Why Places Matter: Shaping Life Sciences Hubs for Growth
· Ambition for the Arc: Shaping a World-Leading Life Sciences Supercluster
· Defining Cluster Success: Lessons from Global Life Sciences Clusters
· Connecting Clusters: Collaborating Across Borders for Life Sciences Innovation.
The week long event attracts a variety of global stakeholders including:
· Investors and venture capital firms seeking emerging opportunities
· Founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs building the next generation of biotech and HealthTech companies
· Senior leaders from academia, research, and industry, committed to advancing collaboration and commercialisation in life sciences.
· International delegations and trade missions exploring UK partnerships
· Policymakers and government representatives shaping the national life sciences strategy

Also on todays panel were: Dr Suki Balendra PhD, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Paddington Life Sciences ; Shanice Wallace, MPP , Business Strategy Manager, City of Boston and Fredrik Warneryd, Swedish Chamber of Commerce for the UK

Opening today’s events, Lord Patrick Vallance, UK Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation said: “We can’t grow the sector unless we become an early adopter of Innovation in health. Policy levers in regulation, clinical trials and procurement are needed to connect the dots. The public and private sectors need to work together to unlock growth.” And Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan who underscored London’s record £1.6 billion in venture capital investment and its ambition to become the new global capital for life sciences.

17/11/2025

Our Future Health UK, the UK’s largest health research programme, is opening clinics across Northern Ireland from tomorrow, 18 November, giving people the chance to help transform the future of disease prevention and treatment.
The first Northern Irish clinics will be at Boots stores in Belfast and Lisburn from with Derry/Londonderry later this month. Our Future Health plans to expand to 25-30 locations from mid-2026, offering up to 40,000 appointment slots for volunteers across Northern Ireland.
Our CEO, Professor Joann Rhodes MBA, said: "By participating in this groundbreaking programme, people across Northern Ireland can contribute to vital population health research that will provide data to uncover new patterns of disease and treatment pathways relevant for our region. This isn't just about collecting data – it's about empowering our community to drive the health discoveries that will benefit generations to come.
“We're proud to support a programme that puts Northern Ireland at the forefront of precision medicine and gives every participant a meaningful role in transforming how we prevent, detect and treat disease."
Each year, around 6,500 people in Northern Ireland die prematurely due to preventable ill-health*. As well as the years of life lost, these diseases inflict significant illness and pain in people’s lives. Promoting a shift towards disease prevention and tackling health inequalities are essential in Northern Irish health policy as well as Our Future Health’s mission, to help everyone live longer, healthier lives.
Our Future Health aims to transform the prevention, detection and treatment of conditions such as dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and stroke. With up to five million volunteers right across the UK, the goal is to create one of the most detailed pictures ever of people’s health.
Find out more and register at https://study.ourfuturehealth.org.uk/welcome?r=community

17/11/2025

Amazing kick-off to a packed London Life Sciences week, hashtag , where the city leverages its leading position as a springboard for the whole of the UK life sciences offering. We joined global innovators, investors, international funds and biotech leaders at the iconic Somerset House for the official launch, organised by MedCity, London & Partners and the BioIndustry Association (BIA) in partnership with Barclays. The high-level reception brought together senior decision-makers from across biotech, pharma, venture capital and UK government.
Following the event, Health Innovation Research Alliance Northern Ireland (HIRANI) CEO, Joann Rhodes MBA said: “It was a pleasure to meet and reconnect with leaders and innovators to share the unique strengths in diagnostics, biotech and digital health and dual EU/UK market positioning in Northern Ireland as part of the UK life sciences offering. This builds on the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) visit to NI last week, which highlighted the need for public investment in skills and expertise to enable our region to unlock these strengths and assets, to attract global collaboration and to accelerate health tech innovation.”
We were delighted to meet with Dr Zubir Ahmed MP, vascular surgeon, MP for Glasgow South West and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Technology, Innovation and Life Sciences within the UK Department of Health and Social Care (you can subscribe to his monthly blog here: https://lnkd.in/eCD6TSSw).
With over 70 events, 1300 investors and 2400 biotech companies taking part we are looking forward to joining panels, making connections for collaborations, and championing the Northern Ireland life sciences ecosystem.

14/11/2025

Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult (CGT Catapult), an independent innovation and technology organisation specialising in the advancement of the cell and gene therapy industry, is working with VascVersa Ltd, a Belfast-based regenerative medicine company, to develop a test that predicts the clinical efficacy of its experimental cell therapy for ischaemic diseases.
Ischemia is caused by a reduction of blood flow to organs or tissues, often as a result of damage to or loss of blood vessels. VascVersa’s innovative therapy aims to treat ischaemic diseases by stimulating blood vessel repair and formation and improving blood supply. It is being developed for treating ischaemic diseases including active wounds, like diabetic foot ulcers, and other complications, such as retinopathies, which affect the retina.
The treatment uses highly pure and potent populations of ANGICYTE™ cells, human vascular reparative cells. When transplanted, these cells integrate with existing vasculature and promote healing and growth of new blood vessels, helping to repair damage. There are a number of steps involved in the production and manufacture of these cells. To improve production, the CGT Catapult and VascVersa are developing a test to predict the effectiveness of these cells prior to transplant. The test detects specific protein levels in the cells which indicate if they will be effective.
"We are delighted to collaborate with the CGT Catapult, to accelerate the development of our cell therapy ANGICYTETM, enabling us to deliver a revolutionary medicine to patients sooner. The technology and support that the CGT Catapult offers has been an invaluable asset on our path to clinical development. We look forward to continuing this successful partnership in the future," said Dr Fiona Cunningham, Senior Scientist at VascVersa
VascVersa is also working with the CGT Catapult to develop an economic model to understand the value that treating diabetic foot ulcers would provide to the NHS and is collaborating with the Northern Alliance Advanced Therapies Treatment Centre (ATTC) network to finalise plans for a clinical trial, including site selection and team formation. Additionally, it is partnering with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) to optimise its process and functional analytics and to manufacture its product.

"The work of VascVersa with its ANGICYTE™ product has potential to improve health and reduce the NHS resources needed to treat diabetic foot ulcers. By working together, to continue the journey of this therapy to the clinic, we hope this will led to a new way to manage these foot ulcers and alleviate pain," said Matthew Durdy, Chief Executive of the CGT Catapult

13/11/2025

A partnership between Ulster University Professor in Biomedical Innovation, Christopher McConville and Almac Sciences has been awarded nearly £100,000 by the Academy of Medical Sciences to set up a screening process for drug suitability and to reduce the cost and time of translating research to clinical trials.
“We do a lot of research within academia and then we have to ask ourselves, who's going to make this? And what we find is we can't make it the way we did in the lab. We have to change all of that to suit the Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO). That sparked an idea for me; I approached our market and specifically Almac Sciences and asked if there was anything they wanted to start up together,” explained Chris.
“By uniting cutting-edge research with real-world pharmaceutical innovation, we began scoping how this work bridges the gap between lab bench and patient bedside, delivering advanced drug formulations that can transform treatment outcomes and redefine how medicines are made.”
The project started in August 2025, and Chris explains how it works:
“I spotlight the research I'm doing, and I work with Almac to see if it fits with their processes. What this then offers is low cost, high throughput which doesn't require a lot of materials and can happen very quickly.
“This process can be used in many areas from nanotechnology to potential cell and gene therapies, translating research to medicines. We are reducing the cost, we have a pipeline to go through, and we can fail fast and pivot if needed.”
Tom Moody, Vice President, API Development and Commercialisation at Almac Sciences, commenting on the partnership said: "Working with Professor Chris McConville exemplifies the power of true scientific collaboration. His openness, deep expertise, and shared commitment to innovation have fostered a partnership that goes beyond technical development. Together, we are building a foundation of trust and knowledge exchange that is essential for advancing melt extrusion technologies and shaping the future of amorphous solid dispersions. It’s this spirit of collaboration that enables us to tackle complex formulation challenges and drive meaningful progress in pharmaceutical science,”
Chris is also the founder of EXTRUDED PHARMACEUTICALS LTD and has developed ChemoSeed, a device designed to be implanted at the surgical margin of hard-to-treat cancers such as brain and pancreatic cancer.
So, what do we need to expand this work in NI?
“We need a small shared GMP facility in Northern Ireland which would shorten the development pipeline and get medications that work to the patients quickly. It we don’t manufacture here; it ends up being made out of NI and doesn’t get to our local patients who need it, for up to 10 years later.” Read more at www.hira-ni.com

12/11/2025

We are partnering with Almac Group today for an event at W5 LIFE in collaboration with RESILIENCE.
Professor Helen McCarthy, NI Chief Science and Technology Adviser along with our CEO Professor Joann Rhodes MBA have set the scene and challenges in NI followed by Gary Lye, UCL, who described the concept and vision of RESILIENCE.
Discussions are now focusing on how RESILIENCE works in practice and how they attract companies and reach across to Healthcare.
Further panel sessions will look at how RESILIENCE can support the opportunity in NI and will include discussions on AI and digital and why they are important for biomanufacturing in NI.
Bio-manufacturing skills are becoming increasingly important as personalised treatments and engineering biology opportunities become a reality. Bespoke manufacturing processes will need to occur from bench to bedside to kerbside, so the skills conversation of what is needed for future careers in R&D, health, QA, regulatory, formulation and scale-up are critical. Life Sciences is an expanding sector that is important to create dynamic support for biotech as they undertake Research & development and bio-manufacturing. This requires highly skilled workers that we need to grow in NI over the next decade to meet demand. Todays event will shine a spotlight on the latest talent development opportunities in the life sciences sector—from schools to industry.
RESILIENCE is the Centre of Excellence building world-leading skills in medicines manufacturing, with a strong focus on delivering impact across the UK, including Northern Ireland. It brings together industry, academia and the health service to create practical, forward-looking training and outreach learning activities, aligned with the latest technologies and regulatory needs. By investing in the skills base here in Northern Ireland, RESILIENCE supports high-value jobs, innovation, and economic growth - positioning Northern Ireland as a key player in the future of UK life sciences.

12/11/2025

Do you have an idea that could help improve the lives of people affected by dementia? Open to NI professionals, the Dementia Innovators Programme is a collaboration between the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme and the Alzheimer's Society.
This pilot programme, for professionals, both within and outside Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI) is aimed at supporting those with an idea that could help improve the lives of people affected by dementia. The programme aims to give individuals the skills and knowledge to develop their innovation, while giving them access to a network of mentors, healthcare professionals and industry experts.

Applications will be accepted to the Dementia Innovators Programme from health and social care staff both in and out of the NHS including frontline health care professionals. This includes allied health professionals, social care professionals, admiral nurses, care home staff, hospice staff, dieticians, opticians, podiatrists, etc.

Applicants need to be based in the UK and be 18 years and over. To see the full list of those who would be eligible please visit the FAQ’s page.

Applications close: 4pm 28th November 2025

Find out more: https://nhscep.com/dementia_innovators/

10/11/2025

Congratulations to NI companies Errigal Bio and Finn Therapeutics Ltd who have been accepted onto this years LYVA Labs Future Medicines Accelerator.

This accelerator is for innovators developing breakthroughs in:
💊 Radiopharmaceuticals
🧬 Cell & gene therapies
🦠 Microbiome therapeutics
🧫 Antimicrobial resistance
🧠 Advanced drug discovery & delivery

Over the coming months, they’ll take part in the Future Medicines Accelerator designed to fast-track innovation, strengthen commercial strategy, and move closer to real-world healthcare impact.

This Accelerator is funded by Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst.

06/11/2025

Our November Company of the month is MediNect Ophtho, and we spoke to CEO, James Bojdo about his innovation journey.

“Before founding MediNect, I worked at a CRO where I helped improve many of its services, and later gained experience in a start-up biotech. That combination gave me insight into both sides of the industry - service delivery and product development. After conversations with Queen's University Belfasts’ Professor Alan Stitt and several companies in the ophthalmology space, I realised there was a real gap in the market for a more collaborative, academically informed approach to working with biotech and pharma partners in retinal disease research.
“This idea was made possible through the ICURe programme at SETsquared, which supported me to carry out market research while working as a postdoc. With that foundation, I went on to incorporate MediNect, with the help of QUBIS Ltd and secured an Innovate UK grant, and later receive an Ambition to Grow grant from Invest Northern Ireland , who have been extremely supportive with both advice and funding as we’ve scaled – Thanks Moraig!

“My role as CEO of MediNect, means I focus primarily on high-level strategy: from marketing and business development to company growth and expansion of our service portfolio. If I had to define my strength, I’d say it’s knowing where I’m not the expert and surrounding myself with people who are. “For example, I knew early on that I wasn’t the best at communicating complex science or that I lacked deep expertise in retinal disease. While I could lean on Alan, we needed someone who had more time and that's why bringing in Kevin Harkin, our Head of Ophthalmology, was such a pivotal decision - he’s exceptional at both the science and the communication side, which allows me to focus on growing the business with full confidence in our scientific leadership.

“MediNect offices are located in Belfast, we have our own labs and access to state-of-the-art retinal imaging equipment and research facilities. It’s actually a fantastic location for what we do. Being in Belfast is key as we are located close to the best talent in NI and logistically, it’s ideal - shipping samples from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is straightforward, and it’s also easier for EU clients to send samples here, via Dublin, compared to getting through into GB. That accessibility, combined with a growing innovation ecosystem and strong institutional support, makes Northern Ireland a very attractive base for a company like ours.”

Read the full story at www.hira-ni.com