WM Health Technologies Cluster are working alongside The Binding Site on a new programme – DIAGCOMM – the West Midlands Diagnostics Innovation Community – for companies working in the diagnostics sector, and are looking for 20 companies to get involved.

Diagnostics is a strength of the West Midlands and the region is home to a cluster of highly innovative companies ranging from small biotechs to multinationals and includes a whole range of organisations that contribute to the supply chain. However, diagnostics is an expensive, complex business and funding, R&D, regulation, procurement and market penetration are challenges experienced by everyone.

What?

DIAGCOMM is a new initiative, free to join, that will support our emerging diagnostics cluster that will bring our region’s, currently fragmented, capabilities together and to create a collaborative community focused on innovation that will support business growth and market access. The Community will be industry-led and comprise business, NHS, academic, investors, regulators and policy makers and run by the new WM Health Technologies Cluster (WMHTC).

DIAGCOMM will provide a safe space to innovate and enable the members to access and exploit new markets (including but not limited to Covid-19), identify and share risk, access local suppliers, work together on issues that are too expensive/risky to address alone, collaborate to attract funding and secure investment from investors with experience and understanding of this complex sector. There is a small pot of funding to support feasibility/proof of concept studies that link members of the Community.

How?

DIAGCOMM will be formally launched on Tuesday 3rd August 2021 at the WMHTC Topical Tuesday on diagnostics.1 In the meantime, we are looking to get the first group of 10 companies on board to tell us in which specific areas you want tailored support and where the gaps in support currently are so that we can fill them. We are looking for organisations that:

•  Are developing new diagnostic products and services
•  Operate in the supply chain (e.g. reagents, hardware, consumables, bespoke packaging …)
•  Have relevant specialist facilities (e.g. clean rooms, prototyping services, small scale manufacture)
•  Have specialist knowledge to share (e.g. regulation, labelling, shelf life optimisation)
•  Investors interested in the sector.

This list is by no means definitive and we welcome any organisation with relevant expertise and interests to share with the Community. Our aim is to recruit 20 companies to the Community by March 2022.

To find out more please contact Paddie Murphy at WMHTC (paddie@wmhtc.co.uk)