A health tech firm has won a £500,000 funding boost to develop technology that helps patients better manage their medicines in their own homes.

CONNECT Care's innovation features a dashboard that links patients, carers and clinicians and empowers the patient to develop more independence and take medications with greater confidence. The company is based at Walton Summit Centre.

The funding package from Innovate UK is part of a £25m scheme to back innovations that are significantly ahead of others in their field.

The existing technology currently gives carers and clinicians information about the patient’s medications use and sends alerts to carers if anything is amiss. The extra funding will help the the company create a ‘novel data insights engine’ that will generate predictive insights and notifications with more context for carers.

Issa Dasu Patel, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of CONNECT Care, said: “Innovate UK gives funding to innovations that are significantly ahead in their field and we are glad to have been recognised as such. We have already integrated medicines data in a unique way, and we want to use that vast drug-specific knowledge to create richer insights.

“All our team has worked in pharmacy, digital health or social care for a number of years and one thing we realised is that managing medicines is a real challenge in the community.

“Once the doctor has written the prescription for the patient there’s very little support. The Innovate UK project will help change that. It will bring together social care commissioners, carers, pharmacists, hospitals, GPs and innovation leads – it’s one of the largest medicines collaborations we’ve ever seen in Lancashire.”

Company co-founder and Chief Operations Officer Rachel Wickenden added: “Our technology ensures that all the information flows between patients, caregivers and clinicians, that are often disconnected, will be fully connected.

“It’s really all about empowering people to better manage their medicines. It’s about driving better engagement by bringing together all the people who matter when it comes to medicines – we want to close the loop between patients, carers and clinicians.”

Steve Adams, the Innovation Agency’s Commercial Programme Manager for Lancashire, said: “We could see the value of what CONNECT Care were developing and we were very pleased to help them meet the right people to ensure the project took place.”