the times | Monday December 6 2021 V2 43
Business
that is offering anybody any value,”
Ward said. “[We] are just taking a
really simple process and making it
more acceptable, accessible and better
value for money by making it digital.”
The company says that its kits could
prevent 27,000 cases of end-stage
kidney disease and may save the NHS
£1.5 billion in five years.
Although Healthy.io has made
progress, Ward admits that
procurement can be a frustrating
process and argues that her
background in the NHS helps. “It
gives you a level of reality and
patience about how long it takes anda smartphone camera into a medical
scanner to help people to manage
potentially serious health conditions.
The technology is said to be
particularly good at detecting patients
at high risk of developing chronic
kidney disease. Using an app on their
phone and a urine test kit sent to
their homes, it is designed to reduce
unnecessary trips to the GP and
hospital by encouraging more people
to seek an early diagnosis.
“There’s absolutely no value in
having to present yourself into a GP
surgery with a physical pot of urine.
That isn’t the face-to-face contact
what the likely decision-making
processes are. Companies starting out
without that kind of insight and
experience can feel frustrated by the
lack of clarity about how decisions are
made... and how long things can take
to happen.
“To get a deal closed in the NHS, it
can be up to 13 people that you have
to get to buy into approving the
decision and any one of them can
close it down, so you really have to
build a coalition of people to get
support for what you’re trying to
achieve. That includes clinical voices,
the finance team, the IT team and the
overall leadership. Having insight to
know how these structures operate
and who’s likely to be driving the
decision is really crucial.”
One business owner who knows
only too well the frustrations of
dealing with the NHS and public
health bodies is Simon Mico,
managing director of Bio-Diagnostics,
a Worcestershire-based company that
says it has developed a “BioCard”
coronavirus immunity test, which
checks for “spike” antibodies in the
body. These, according Mico, can give
a clear picture of immunity and could
save the NHS money and time by
identifying booster vaccines
candidates among those whose
immunity has waned, rather than
vaccinating the entire population.
Mico, 41, funded the research and
development of the BioCard himself,
investing £250,000 by remortgaging
his family home. “I felt that the call to
arms at the beginning was like a
Dunkirk spirit. It doesn’t matter how
small you are, if you’ve got the
capacity to work out how to solve the
problem, you need to put your all into
doing that.”
Despite securing approval from the
Medicines and Healthcare Products
Regulatory Agency for his BioCard,
Mico said that he had been unable to
get any traction with the NHS. “We
ordinarily would have been able to go
to the NHS labs and say, ‘We’ve made
the first test in the world that can give
you an accurate level of
antibodies to this virus, would you
like some?’ [But we] were unable
to do that [because NHS trusts]
were effectively having to utilise
the platforms that had gone
through a fast-track system via
Public Health England, which we
weren’t invited to become a part
of.”
That body has since been
disbanded. The UK Health
Security Agency, which took over
its responsibilities in October 2021,
has been approached for comment.
Mico, who employs 30 people at
Bio-Diagnostics, said that he was
selling BioCard at cost to doctors
and front-line clinicians, as well as
to immuno-supressed individuals
anxious about their immunity
status. He remains hopeful that he
will be able to persuade the NHS of
its merits.tests are said to be especially adept at identifying a high risk of kidney disease
VICKI COUCHMAN FOR THE TIMESy
a
li
to
w
th
th
P
w
od
S
it
hB
s
a
to
a
s
w
itgroups and businesses have come
together to forge a shared path to
tackle the climate crisis, business
leaders in the UK need to adopt the
same mindset in rebooting the
economy.
To achieve the government’s
ambition of a high-wage, high-skill,
high-growth economy, we need to
work together to help every part of
the UK to achieve its full potential,
producing the best goods and
services supported by the highest-
quality skills. The revival of the UK
economy is a shared goal and it’s
one that we all — government and
businesses, large and small — need
to work towards together in lockstep
if we are to deliver a fairer and more
prosperous country.Sir Roger Carr is the chairman of
BAE Systemsstrategies and processes in place to
grow and develop and improve their
productivity performance.
The impact can be
transformational, turning a regional
manufacturer into an international
exporter or a start-up into a
sustainable, long-term business. In
the past year, the organisation
helped more than 5,700 small
business leaders, delivering a
productivity uplift of approximately
£114 million in challenging times.
Not every company will interact
with an array of SMEs on a daily
basis, but the knowledge and
expertise that exists within the big
business community is an invaluable
asset as small companies look to
make significant strides to
improving productivity and
achieving growth.
Just as governments, campaignNavy. It also works with more than
100 suppliers in the region to help
prosperity and with the Furness
Academy and local primary schools
to raise educational standards.
Recognising the value of small
businesses, not only to its own supply
chain but to the wider economy, BAE
Systems is a leading supporter of Be
The Business, a non-profit
organisation that through finance,
coaching and mentoring helps
smaller companies to put the right‘The need to lift the
UK’s persistently poor
productivity
performance has never
been more urgent’
economy is £83 billion, or 4 per cent,
smaller per year than it should be
because of an imbalance in
performance between the greater
southeast and the rest of the country.
The government has a mandate to
make the UK a fairer economic
environment, bringing more
opportunities and prosperity to
under-invested regions through its
levelling-up agenda. While
investment in regional
infrastructure and funding to support
small and medium-sized enterprises
across the country with new
technologies and digital skills is
essential, for government to succeed
big businesses need to play their part.
By working with local education
providers, sharing expertise and
skills with the 5.5 million smaller
businesses across the UK, as well as
driving innovation and investing in
their own people, big businesses can
make a significant impact.
This is not just altruistic, it is
essential. For BAE Systems, securing
a talent pipeline and a healthy
national supply chain is critical to
the country’s defence and security
needs. Last year alone, the company
worked with more than 5,000
suppliers across the UK, spending
£3.8 billion and recruiting more
than 1,200 apprentices and
graduates.
BAE Systems has seen at first
hand the benefits that a focus on
regional economic clusters can
achieve. In Barrow-in-Furness,
Cumbria, where in 2020 25 per cent
of working-age people did not have
five good GCSEs or equivalent, the
business employs more than a
quarter of the working population
producing submarines for the Royal