Building international partnerships for stroke rehabilitation
Innovate UK
Nudge Reality Limited
15m strokes occur each year worldwide, including 100,000 in the UK, 795,000 in the USA and 1.1m in Europe. 2/3rds of patients are left with some form of cognitive impairment and in the UK the societal cost of stroke is £25.6 billion/year and forecast to treble between 2015-2035 as the ageing population grows. Conventional care involves repetitive tasks to relearn cognitive function, which is hard, tedious work with little feedback on progress. NICE recommends 45 minutes of inpatient therapy, five days/week but this is seldom fulfilled due to staffing shortages and cost pressure.    Virtue is the first immersive Virtual Reality (VR) programme developed for the rehabilitation of cognitive function after a stroke, stimulating new areas of the brain to compensate for damaged ones. It mirrors the approach used by Occupational Therapists, helping patients re-learn the activities needed for everyday living, such as getting dressed, preparing food and going shopping. A 40-inpatient clinical trial of the prototype has shown that stroke patients engage with it, recover more strongly and can be discharged earlier.    Yet the UK represents less than 1% of the global market for stroke care and while it remains key, adoption within the NHS is a slow process. To maximise our chances of commercial success we need to develop partnerships to reach other, readily accessible markets with similar healthcare demands in parallel. To that end we will focus on entering the US and European markets, both having established and well regulated healthcare systems, and the Middle East, where many countries are early adopters of technology with favourable reimbursement pathways.    The main outcome from this study will be the establishment of early overseas partnerships that provide access to new markets and open up new opportunities for commercialisation. The deliverables from the project will be three strategic marketing plans for each territory which will detail the business model and execution plan.
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