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Background

Vanilla Blush is a Glasgow-based medical lingerie business founded by a former nurse, Nicola Dames. The business specialises in garments for people living with a colostomy, ileostomy or a urostomy, which are all categorised as stomas. Approximately 102,000 individuals live with an excretory stoma in the UK, with around 21,000 individuals undergoing stoma-forming surgery each year. 

Having a stoma herself, Nicola embarked on her first business venture to develop a new line of underwear for females and males who have suffered from similar conditions. The Vanilla Blush unique underwear is carefully designed with those individuals in mind and comes in a range of colours and sizes with a built-in pouch to conceal the bag.

Listed as a Class 1 Medical Device, the Vanilla Blush garments are supplied to the NHS throughout the UK and are also exported to 18 other countries around the world.

Challenge

A bowel stoma is an artificial opening on the surface of the abdomen that has been surgically created in order to divert the flow of enteric or faecal matter into an external bag. The most common underlying conditions that may require the formation of a bowel stoma include colorectal cancer, diverticular disease, incontinence and inflammatory bowel disease. One of the most frequent complications following stoma creation is parastomal hernia which occurs when an internal part of the body pushes through a weakness in the muscle or surrounding tissue wall. The UK Association of Stoma Care Nurses recommends ‘belts/underwear’ ‘to aid prevention of hernias and offer abdominal muscle support.

Nicola Dames was keen to better understand the individual’s experiences of living with a stoma and usage of support garments. To do so, she appointed a Stoma Care Specialist Nurse who was visiting the nurses responsible for these groups of patients to get an understanding of what advice they give around two key issues:

Following a referral from Scottish Enterprise, Nicola got in touch with Interface to seek help in finding an academic partner to investigate the following:

Solution

Working with Ruth Oliver at Interface, Vanilla Blush was successfully matched with the right academic partner at the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) to complete the first study, exploring people’s experiences of support garments following bowel stoma formation.

The Department of Nursing at UHI has a thriving health and well-being research group that includes nurses, midwives and behavioural scientists. The current research programme in the Department of Nursing is about physical activity in people who have a stoma. This programme is led by Dr Gill Hubbard, an accomplished researcher, behavioural scientist and Director of Research in the Department of Nursing at UHI.

Dr Hubbard has excellent research partnerships with the Colostomy Association and Ileostomy and Internal Pouch Support Group, as well as Bowel and Cancer Research. She also has a thriving Stoma Patient Advisory Group. Dr Hubbard’s essential expertise enabled Vanilla Blush to address the gaps in their evidence about support garments during physical activity, to reduce the risk of hernia in people who have a bowel stoma. 

Business Benefits

As a concept, brand and company, Vanilla Blush embodies both the patient’s perspective and academic enterprise, which is required for an ethically-based efficient business offering an economically beneficial service to the NHS.

Academic Benefits 

The key findings from this project resulted in multiple academic manuscripts and have been presented at various industry-leading conferences throughout the UK and Europe. The full publication is available here.

Background

Dunnet Bay Distillers is a microdistillery located in Dunnet Bay on the coastline of the North Sea.  They produce award-winning Rock Rose Gin and Holy Grass Vodka.

The aim of this distillery is to develop a range of distilled products with a focus on locally sourced raw materials.

These include locally grown Rhodiola rosea, rowan berries, and seaweed harvested from the nearby coastline.

Challenge

In 2013, Martin Murray, company director and, at the time, an MSc student in the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling programme at Heriot-Watt University, contacted Dr Annie Hill at the University looking to generate recipe and process methodology for both a seaweed vodka and seaweed gin.

Solution

After contacting Interface, the distillery was awarded a Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface, to cover the costs of their collaboration with Heriot-Watt University. 

Research work within this project led to the creation of a wide range of novel distilled spirits. The seaweed sample from the shore by the distillery was found to contain three types of seaweed rather than a single type leading to an increase in the number of distillations performed. Products included vodka distilled using a mixed range of seaweed types and using two different methods of distillation, three vodkas distilled with individual types of seaweed, and nine gins distilled with a variation in the botanicals used. Preference testing was carried out for the gins created including taste panel testing of seaweed gin with a range of commonly used mixers to determine the commercial potential of the products.

Follow-on Activity

Martin and his wife Claire have always been keen to make their distillery as green and carbon neutral as possible. With their production growing steadily, the waste generated also increased in tandem.  After such a successful project with Heriot-Watt University, the couple sought the assistance of Interface to source additional academic expertise to determine new ways of efficiently reducing and dealing with their waste.

Interface matched them with the University of Aberdeen who have since undertaken an initial review of Dunnet Bay Distillers’ berry waste and plan to take this project further to repurpose the waste for other uses.

Another area that generates considerable waste is the plastic packaging which covers the distiller’s iconic ceramic bottles during their long journey to Dunnet.  Martin worked with the University of Strathclyde and a student group to determine alternative uses for this packaging so that it does not end up in landfill.  The project is now complete and Martin is looking at implementing the suggested solution on site.

Another challenge Dunnet Bay Distillers faced as production increased was the ability to know if the water tank for distilling was near empty. Martin’s very basic method of hitting it with his hand to determine how full it was needed an upgrade but he simply did not have the time to research and implement any new technology.  Through working with Shaie MacDonald at Interface, a student from UHI North Highland College was recruited to develop a customised gauge for them.  The project has now been completed and the solution implemented and incorporated into a bigger piece of work by a consultant.

On seeking academic help within your business, never think a project is too small. The expertise out there is vast and until you work with an intermediary such as Interface, it is very difficult and time consuming to find a potential match. Interface can help you define your project clearly and take a lot of the time burden away so that you can get the right expert help when you need it, said Martin Murray, Director, Dunnet Bay Distillers.

Please note that Interface administers the Innovation Voucher Scheme on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council. All funding applications are reviewed on a case by case basis by the Scottish Funding Council, guidelines can be found here.

Albyn Housing Society Limited began in 1973 by building homes for the incoming workers at the Invergordon smelter. Started with only a handful of staff, the Society now has 63 employees and two offices in Invergordon and Inverness and currently manages over 2,750 properties either through affordable rent or low cost home ownership schemes.

Background

Albyn Housing Society wanted to investigate the feasibility of offering Assisted Living Services to their vulnerable residents through the use of Assisted Living Technologies as part of their suite of services.

Assisted Living Technologies (ALT) are defined as those sensors, devices and communication systems that together allow the delivery of Assisted Living Services (ALS) including telehealth, telecare, wellness, digital participation and teleworking services.

Interest in telecare is growing due to concern over caring for increasing numbers of older people and the challenges of service delivery in remote and rural areas. Telecare is viewed increasingly as a means of creating efficiencies and cost savings for service providers, prolonging independence and improving quality of life for service users and supporting carers.

The Business Challenge

Interface – The knowledge connection for business facilitated a meeting between Albyn Housing Society and the Centre for Rural Health at the University of the Highlands & Islands to discuss the idea of providing Assisted Living Technologies to their vulnerable customers as part of the suite of services that they currently provide. Albyn Housing wanted to explore what the new service delivery model might look like, how it could benefit the business/customer and how it could be implemented and evaluated. They were also interested in opening up possibilities for training and job opportunities for young people in rural areas.

Having examined the conclusions and recommendations of the initial feasibility study into telecare delivery, Albyn Housing Society are looking to develop a longer term collaborative relationship that will allow them to proceed with planning and establishing a telecare service to vulnerable customers.

“Our involvement with Interface has been hugely beneficial for Albyn Housing Society Ltd as their introduction has been fundamental in developing our relationship with the Centre for Rural Health and has led to further joint work with UHI. We have already generated interest from the social housing sector in the work we have done so far…” Calum Macaulay, Cheif Executive, Albyn Housing Society