Major funding award for tech design firm

Senior clinical scientist and acting service lead at Barnsley Hospital, Simon Judge; managing director of GSPK Design Ltd, Paul Marsh; and commercial director of D4D Ltd, Oliver Wells. (S)

The money will allow GSPK Design to further develop a unique wireless smart switch to help people with acute brain injury or severe disabilities to engage with their environment by using their muscles’ electrical signals.

The company was one of just six to win phase-two funding, having impressed a panel of medical experts looking for innovative technologies that solved unmet needs.

Paul Marsh, managing director of GSPK Design, said: “This funding will not only allow us to develop the product to take it through clinical trials and to market, but it will also allow us to implement medical standards into our processes that will not only benefit us, but also our other customers, so I’m not sure which is more exciting, being able to develop our own products within the ‘medtech’ field or being able to help other companies develop theirs.”

The work is being carried out with teams from Barnsley Hospital, the University of Sheffield and NIHR Devices for Dignity (D4D), and was commissioned and funded by NHS England’s SBRI Healthcare initiative.