The startups getting you most excited

Medwise.ai is a search engine aimed squarely at healthcare professionals. The aim is to make it easy to find the latest, most relevant guidelines for any kind of care without having to keep on top of the latest rules, research, and clinical data.

CEO Omar Quraishi describes Workscope as “helping companies identify where there are potentially operational risks and data risks within their spreadsheet operations. But we also allow them to understand how spreadsheet processes are executed on the ground so that they can identify potential areas to improve efficiency. It's an old problem and a new way to solve it.”

Quraishi says that in addition to security concerns, another big use case is businesses planning migration to Microsoft 365, and other digital transformation projects. Understanding the scale of their reliance on spreadsheets can give them “insights to help them on that journey in a more strategic and orderly manner.”

With technological advances in chip design and manufacturing, smart, forward-thinking electronics companies are figuring out how to secure chip supply chains that give them a competitive edge and secure them against the turbulence of a rapidly shifting world.

ChipFlow is a new startup that wants to make it easier for electronics manufacturers to embrace this shift in approach by simplifying the chip design process. 

As amazing as antibiotics are for the world, they’re not much use if they no longer make us better due to pathogens building up resistance to them…

MetalloBio is a University of Sheffield spinout looking to solve the problem. They’ve developed a novel antimicrobial compound that co-founder and CEO Kirsty Smitten says “represents a new antimicrobial class. It’s broad spectrum and can target all World Health Organization and CDC priority pathogens.”

While the startup is understandably keeping the specifics of what’s new here close to its chest, Smitten says it exploits “a new chemical space that's different from anything in the clinical pipeline” and should be better at avoiding problems with resistance faced by similar antibiotics.

As you’d expect, bringing new drugs to market based on MetalloBio’s compounds isn’t an overnight process. So while they work towards this in the coming years, the startup has found another use for the technology that it can start selling much sooner - antibacterial coatings for medical devices.

KYC–Know Your Customer–rules are an essential part of the financial services world. But in the battle against fraud, wouldn’t it be better if a wider range of businesses were able to run background checks on the people they serve? That’s the idea behind London-based Onbord. 

“We use technology to stop bad people doing bad things to good businesses,” CEO Edward Cahill snappily explains. 

“Our thesis is that KYC is fundamental. When you're dealing with somebody, you should know who you're dealing with. Forget about what the regulator tells you, it's just good business practice.

This startup is looking to transform wheat production in the UK by boosting farmers’ profits and capturing carbon in the soil while replacing the need for agrochemicals and satisfying increasing demand for organic produce.

Alkama is developing a replacement for chemical fertilisers when growing crops - initially targeting wheat farmers in the UK. The product is called FITS, standing for ‘Factory In The Soil’ because of its ability to make all the nutrients the crop needs.

It takes the form of micro-organisms supplied in a thick liquid form, around the same consistency as ketchup. This is then either diluted and sprayed on the crop in the field, applied to seeds before drilling, or the soil itself can be treated with the product.

‘Small data’ is a growing field that looks to bring the benefits of machine learning to businesses that lack large data sets. Gartner predicted last year that by 2025, “70% of organizations will shift their focus from big to small and wide data, providing more context for analytics and making artificial intelligence less data hungry.”

Sheffield-based TUBR (pronounced tube-er) is looking to carve out a unique niche in the space by leveraging expertise in physics to make predictions about physical space and objects to help customers make the most of their resources and optimise customer experiences.

“We believe that by 2030, all of the mass audience events on Earth will be participative,” says CEO Gareth Langley. “People will be taking out their mobile phones to join in with mass audience engagement and activities with everybody else in the stadium.”

Piing wants to bring this future to life with its games. Langley paints a picture of sitting in a stadium at half-time during a sports match or waiting for a concert to begin. A QR code or short URL appears on a big screen, or maybe you receive a push notification.

You pull out your phone, load up a web page in your mobile browser or embedded in an app, and suddenly you’re playing a penalty shootout game or interactive gameshow with 100,000 people.

And because it’s on the web, people watching live at home can take part too.

AMPLY Discovery has developed software that can analyse digital biological data and identify compounds that could be useful for human and animal healthcare. They’re using it to identify new antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, and anti-parasitic drugs among others. 

A.I.-based drug discovery is nothing new, but AMPLY Discovery sets itself apart with its unusual approach.

“Small organisms fight one another. Bacteria fight other bacteria for supremacy, larger organisms have to try to fight off smaller organisms. So what we're doing is we're finding those compounds that these creatures are already producing, shaped by years of evolution and appropriating them for human beings,” says CEO Ben Thomas.

And finding these compounds is just the beginning…