Inside the 'Walled Garden'

Working with the Impeller Ventures’ Walled Garden allows us to take a more proactive approach to musculoskeletal (MSK) innovation. This is essential if we are to even come close to addressing the enormous MSK health challenge. Around 30% of the UK adult population (20+ million people) are experiencing poor MSK health and the problem will only grow in an ageing population.

Unfortunately, the existing MSK innovation ecosystem is not delivering. Research we commissioned earlier this year from the National Institute for Health and Care Research highlighted an innovation gap within MSK health in the UK, with few ideas being translated into scalable products and services, and many academic researchers lacking the skills and support to bring their ideas to market. Despite poor MSK health being classified by the UK government as a ‘major condition’, it suffers from a lack of investment and innovation compared to higher profile conditions such as cancer, heart disease, mental ill-health, dementia and respiratory disease. This lack of profile for MSK health means that clinical entrepreneurs tend to ignore potential commercial opportunities, in what is invariably characterised as an old-person’s health issue, and most of our brilliant engineering, materials science and computer science researchers do not have MSK health on their radar.

It is clear that MSK health needs a space beyond the traditional research and development landscape to protect, nurture and grow research ideas (‘seeds’ in the language for the Walled Garden) that are not able to grow in the existing ecosystem. We have already witnessed the power of the Walled Garden, and skills of its expert ‘gardeners’, to connect people with ideas, to clinicians grappling with MSK problems. We believe this ability to build informal networks, identify research ideas with potential and combine different research ideas (many from outside the usual MSK space) into new solutions (‘recipes’) has the potential to transform MSK innovation.

The founder of our charity, Ronald Furlong, combined a highly successful career as an orthopaedic surgeon with an equally successful career as an entrepreneur. He was responsible for a revolution in artificial joint and implant design, dramatically transforming the long-term results of joint replacements and the lives of many patients. We are in no doubt that he would have been a supporter of the Walled Garden approach. By working with Impeller and Shionogi we are following in his footsteps by bring to market products and service innovations that will transform the work of clinicians and the lives of those suffering from poor MSK health, at scale and at speed.