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Last month, we explored how ÌÇÐÄÔ­´´ers are turning discoveries into businesses, and how Nottingham Technology Ventures (NTV) helps them find the expertise and investment to grow and scale. Within its portfolio of more than 40 spin-outs are companies working on some of healthcare’s most difficult problems.

From improving treatment for people with Tourette syndrome and dementia to advancing our understanding of brain health, these ventures showcase how ÌÇÐÄÔ­´´ is changing what's next in healthcare.

Three of those businesses are taking different approaches to conditions affecting the brain. Neupulse’s wrist-worn wellness device, developed from research into tics associated with Tourette syndrome, began reaching customers in June, while Quantified Imaging has secured US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for its imaging software that helps to assess whether dementia treatment is working. Meanwhile Cerca Magnetics is supplying wearable brain scanners to researchers internationally, with cumulative sales of around £33m to date.

Behind those achievements are researchers whose ambitions developed alongside their discoveries. Building a business meant finding new colleagues, securing backing and learning unfamiliar skills. The reasons for doing it were often much more personal.

Neupulse

Professor Stephen Jackson’s team began studying Tourette syndrome around 20 years ago, investigating the brain mechanisms behind tics. But the people taking part in the research had a more immediate concern.

“The idea of trying to develop a treatment came about through talking to patients,” he says. “They wanted a safe and effective treatment that didn’t involve taking drugs, that was cheap and could be used outside of the clinic, ideally at home.”

Those conversations helped shape the research that eventually led to Neupulse: a wrist-worn device that delivers rhythmic electrical stimulation to the median nerve. The technology was developed through research exploring whether this kind of stimulation could influence brain networks involved in tics and help people with Tourette syndrome manage their symptoms.

Early funding from Tourette’s Action supported the research. With help from Nottingham Technology Ventures, a company was formed in 2021, commercialising work by Jackson, Professor Georgina Jackson and Dr Barbara Morera. A wearable prototype followed for a UK-wide clinical trial in 2022–23, which Jackson says showed reductions in tics among participants.

Jackson describes NTV’s involvement at the beginning as “absolutely critical”. Turning the research into a commercial device required expertise he knew he could not supply alone.

“With 30 years as an academic, I did not have the skills or the knowledge to be able to spin out the company,” he says. “Initially, naively, I might have thought that I could have been CEO or chair. But actually, that was wholly unrealistic.”

The business now employs around 21 people, allowing Jackson to concentrate on the work he does best as Chief Scientific Officer.

“That allows me to do the basic research that underpins the development of new products and novel applications.”

This February, Neupulse announced £3m in funding to support product development, regulatory progress and commercialisation. Its first product, Neupulse C, launched in the UK in June as a wellness device, designed to support calm and relaxation during moments of restlessness or physical tension.

Alongside the launch, the company is continuing to progress Neupulse M through the medical-device regulatory pathway. Neupulse M builds on the same underlying research and technology developed through the team’s work on Tourette syndrome.

People using the Neupulse C device have already begun sharing accounts of what it means for their daily lives on social media, while the technology has also attracted .

“Some of them would bring tears to your eyes,” Jackson says. “A woman posted the other day how wearing the device, she managed to get through her wedding vows without tics. Another was able to go through an airport for the first time without ticcing. It’s really heartwarming.”

Quantified Imaging

For someone receiving treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, knowing whether it is helping can take months. Quantified Imaging, co-founded by Professor Michael Chappell, is using novel MRI analysis software to help doctors better understand whether treatment is having its intended effect, and informing the development of new treatments.

The Nottingham spin-out reached a major milestone in June when its imaging software received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance, paving the way for its adoption by clinicians and hospitals in the US. Pilots are already underway at four US hospitals, while the company has secured three commercial contracts, with a fourth expected shortly.

For Chappell, the company continues a longstanding interest in seeing his research used by others. Before joining Nottingham, he had worked in a research group that invested time in making software accessible and supporting researchers who adopted it.

“It was almost second nature to want to support other people to use the tools that we created,” he says.

The work was more than just publishing code. His team developed tools that other groups could use, helped them put those tools into practice and supported their adoption in large international studies.

For this project to reach patients, Chappell needed a team able to develop and support a clinical product, secure investment and navigate medical-device regulation. Spinning out Quantified Imaging provided a way to bring those skills together and take the research into hospitals. Chappel’s former PhD student Tom Kirk became co-founder and chief executive, while the university helped underwrite the initial cash flow.

“Many years ago, I vowed I wasn’t going to spin out a company,” he says. “I had lots of former colleagues who did it, and I looked at it and thought, that seems crazy. But actually, it’s been quite satisfying.”

QI has raised around £2m to date, including £600,000 in non-dilutive grant funding and support through two Innovate UK awards. That investment is helping the company accelerate development of the technology and move it towards wider clinical use, demonstrating one of the advantages of bringing the research into a spin-out.

The commercial opportunity is also growing as new Alzheimer’s treatments reach patients. QI estimates that, even if only 1% of the eligible population received treatment, the market for monitoring those patients would already be worth approximately $1.5bn a year.

Chappell combines his involvement in QI with his role as deputy head of the School of Medicine. He acknowledges the challenge, but has also found a familiar source of satisfaction in helping colleagues develop their work.

“There are lots of things to worry about!” he says. “But I like supporting a team. And that’s where it also overlaps with being Deputy Head of School - it’s supporting people to succeed and excel.”

The experience has left Chappell wondering how many more academics could combine research with building a business, given the right support.

“We’ve probably got an untapped pool of people who’ve got potential to do this as well,” he says. “It’s often a binary choice: you’re in university or you’re out in the world of business. Actually, there are places where there’s quite a productive overlap. Are we backing the people who can do that?”

Cerca Magnetics

While Neupulse and Quantified Imaging focus directly on patient care, Cerca Magnetics is helping researchers answer some of the biggest unanswered questions about how the brain works.

When the ÌÇÐÄÔ­´´’s MEG research team first considered spinning out, they thought selling £10,000 worth of equipment would count as a respectable result.

By this summer, cumulative sales stood at around £33 million. The company has supplied their wearable brain imaging technology to research institutions across four continents, and they count some of the world’s most prestigious universities among their customers.

The technology measures tiny magnetic fields generated by electrical activity in the brain, a technique called magnetoencephalography, or MEG. Conventional systems require bulky equipment cooled with liquid helium; Cerca uses small quantum sensors mounted in a helmet. Its design fits babies through to adults and allows movement during scans, providing improved data at lower cost than conventional MEG scanners.

Research began in 2014. As requests for systems grew, Elena Boto, then a postdoctoral fellow, began pressing the case for a spinning out. Professor Matt Brookes, who leads Nottingham’s MEG research, was initially sceptical.

“My initial thought was ‘what do we know about a company? Let’s just be researchers!’” he explains. “But eventually Elena’s case got so strong, we had to give it a go.”

Cerca was formed in 2020 as a joint venture between the University and existing collaborator Magnetic Shields Limited (MSL). Each provided £150,000, and MSL managing director David Woolger became Cerca’s CEO.

“Having MSL’s backing was key. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter that we didn’t know how to run a company, because David did!”

For Brookes, a particular satisfaction of the last 6 years has been seeing researchers use the brain scanning equipment to pursue scientific questions that his own group would never have investigated. Researchers in Toronto, the first to acquire Cerca’s technology, have used it to study brain activity in children with autism.

“You suddenly see the stuff that you’ve been developing for years, being used by other people in a completely different way than you ever envisaged,” Brookes says. “That’s by far the best bit, to see something that you’ve worked on become useful.”

The next ambition is hospital use, including helping locate the source of epileptic seizures to assess and plan surgery for patients whose seizures are not controlled by drugs. New investment will accelerate the work towards medical-device approval.

“For 6 years Cerca has made a profit, and we could try to get medical device approval by selling systems and channelling profit back into R&D,” Brookes says. “But it would probably take a long time, and we want to do it quickly. So, the new investment will be game changing.”

The connection to Nottingham's imaging history provides a significant source of inspiration for Cerca.

“If you go back to the work Sir Peter Mansfield did, it was all about using physics to build machines that could, for want of a better phrase, make invisible things visible,” Brookes says. “That's what the Imaging Centre in Nottingham has done ever since. MRI has fundamentally changed medicine, but there are things that it can’t do. With MEG, we are trying to fill one of the gaps.”

For Brookes, seeing research achieve real world impact is the ultimate goal.

“MEG technology has huge potential in understanding and monitoring brain health. If there’s someone somewhere – maybe a patient with epilepsy – whose life can be improved because of the work we do, I’ll take that as a win!”

Together, these companies demonstrate the breadth of Nottingham's health innovation ecosystem and how research can successfully move beyond discovery into real-world impact.