Advertisement: Barclays Corporate
Astrazeneca advertisement
Advertisement: CJBS mid banner
Advertisement: Cambridge Network mid banner
Advertisement: Mills and Reeve mid banner
Advertisement: Marshall mid banner
Advertisement: SJIP Dirac Building mid-banner
Advertisement: TTP
Advertisement: PwC midbanner
21 March, 2019 - 11:55 By Tony Quested

Ieso wins major accolade in Business Weekly Awards

Ieso Digital Health

Ieso Digital Health has been crowned Business of the Year in the 29th annual Business Weekly Awards, held at Queens’ College in Cambridge.

Ieso provides live, one-to-one cognitive behavioural therapy on behalf of the NHS and some of America’s biggest healthcare providers. 

It is now integrating Artificial Intelligence into its platform for the first time, enabling therapists to receive date-led insights about each patient during the assessment stage of treatment, providing them with predictions of a patient’s presenting condition, severity of presentation and likelihood of completing a full course of therapy. 

Kevin Calder, for sponsor Mills & Reeve told 250 local and international guests at the presentation dinner: “The platform encompasses the therapy, guides the therapist and improves therapy, as demonstrated by ever improving outcomes – something that has not been achieved in important areas like depression for 30 years. 

“Ieso is also partnering with leading US institutions (Harvard and the Beck Institute), to help with the Ieso training in what will be a massive market opportunity for the business.”

Paul Mason, Sir David Klenerman, Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, and Tony Raven of Cambridge Enterprise
From left: Guest speaker Paul Mason, Sir David Klenerman, Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, and Tony Raven of Cambridge Enterprise

The Cambridge Enterprise Lifetime Achievement Award went jointly to Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Sir David Klenerman partner pioneers in genome sequencing. 

Paul Mason with Academic Entrepreneur of the Year, Tuomas Knowles and Anne Dobrée of Cambridge Enterprise
Paul Mason with Academic Entrepreneur of the Year, Tuomas Knowles and Anne Dobrée of Cambridge Enterprise

Other Cambridge academic entrepreneurs honoured on the night were Tuomas Knowles for his work with Fluidic Analytics and Wren Therapeutics, and Professor Steve Jackson, founder of three companies and originator of Olaparib/Lynparza, partnered by AstraZeneca with Merck and valued as an asset at up to $17 billion. 

Professor Steve Jackson (centre) with Pierre Louis-Joffrin (left) and Julian Gough
Cambridge Torchbearer Award winner Professor Steve Jackson (centre) with Pierre Louis-Joffrin (left) and Julian Gough of Disruptive Technology Award winner, Mogrify.

Cambridge superchip designer Arm won the Graduate Business of the Year Award sponsored by Cambridge Judge Business School.

Kirsty Gill of Arm (centre) with Paul Mason and Hanadi Jabado of Cambridge Judge Business School
Kirsty Gill of Arm (centre) with Paul Mason and Hanadi Jabado of Cambridge Judge Business School

Judge also backed the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year which was won by Poppy Gustafsson, CEO of cyber defence world leader Darktrace. She pipped three other terrific finalists in Dr Jill Reckless (RxCelerate), Dr Sarah Howell of Arecor and Loubna Bouarfa of OKRA Technologies.

Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson receives the Cambridge Judge Business School Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Simon Thorpe
Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson receives the Cambridge Judge Business School Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award from Simon Thorpe (right)

There was ample compensation for OKRA as the young company won the inaugural AI Innovation Award.

Rasim Shah and Maggie Wang from OKRA Technologies with Andrew Moore of Bailey Fisher
Rasim Shah and Maggie Wang from OKRA Technologies receiving the AI Innovation Award from Andrew Moore of Bailey Fisher

Life science companies contributed to a record entry for the sector this year and this was reflected by the decision to award two trophies in the Life Science Innovation category sponsored by AstraZeneca and MedImmune.

Kenneth Smith and Paul Kinnon of PredictImmune with Shaun Grady of AstraZeneca
Professor Kenneth Smith (left) and Paul Kinnon (centre) collect the Life Science Innovation (Best Product) Award from Shaun Grady of AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca executive Shaun Grady named PredictImmune (Best Product) and Crescendo Biologics (Best Platform) as the respective winners.

Peter Pack with Paul Mason and Shaun Grady
Crescendo Biologics CEO, Peter Pack (centre) with Paul Mason (left) and Shaun Grady

Another life science company, Mogrify, won the Disruptive Technology Award. Jeanette Walker of sponsor Cambridge Science Park told guests: “Mogrify’s technology can convert any mature cell type into any other mature cell type without going through a pluripotent stem cell – or even a progenitor cell-state. Mogrify will transform the development of life saving cell therapies via the licence of proprietary cell conversions tailored to any therapeutic application.”

Giles Barker and Sachin Shende of KisanHub
Giles Barker and Sachin Shende of KisanHub receive the Young Company of the Year Award from Paul Mason (left) and Andrew Baker-Campbell op TTP Group (right)

The Young Company of the Year Award went to KisanHub, which is accelerating development of its Crop Intelligence Platform which brings data-led decision-making to both producers and suppliers within the agriculture industry. 

KisanHub already has a user base of over 3,000 and its technology enables big data, cloud computing and machine learning to come together and make agriculture predictable and profitable.

Kirsty Smith, CEO of CBM UK receives The Kate Gross Award for Social Enterprise
Kirsty Smith, CEO of CBM UK receives The Kate Gross Award for Social Enterprise from Professor Ian Hutchings of the Univrsity of Cambridge

The Kate Gross Award for Social Enterprise was won by CBM which tackles poverty, prevents blindness, improves health and changes the lives of disabled people around the world. 

Last year it protected 23 million people from blinding diseases, enabled 39,008 children with disabilities to go to school and restored sight to 413,468 people through cataract surgery.

PragmatIC CEO Scott White with Marshall Group CEO, Robert Marshall and guest speaker Paul Mason
PragmatIC CEO Scott White (centre) receives the Engineering Excellence Award from Marshall Group CEO, Robert Marshall (right) and guest speaker Paul Mason

Engineering companies across various disciplines also starred. PragmatIC Printing won the Engineering Excellence Award while coding and marking world leader Domino Printing Sciences took the International Trade Champion prize.

Carl Haycock of Domino Printing with Duncan McCunn of Barclays nd Paul Mason
Carl Haycock (centre) from Domino Printing collects the International Trade Champion award from Duncan McCunn of Barclays (right) and Paul Mason

International trade was also to the fore in the new UK/China Business Award sponsored by Cambridge China Centre. From an incredibly strong initial shortlist, Abcam emerged victorious. 

Yvonne Chien of Abcam with Jinzhao Li who heads up the Cambridge China Centre
Yvonne Chien of Abcam (centre) receives the Cambridge China Centre UK/China Business Award from Jinzhao Li who heads up the Cambridge China Centre

China was once again its fastest growing major market in the last year, with sales increasing by over 22 per cent. Abcam, which sells life science tools to researchers worldwide, opened a China office in January 2014 and has grown exponentially ever since, showing a sustained commitment to the Chinese market.

Paul Mason, Billy Boyle, David Ruiz-Alonso and Aboudy Nasser from Stansted Airport
Aboudy Nasser from Stansted Airport (right) presents the ScaleUP of the Year Award to Billy Boyle (second left) and David Ruiz-Alonso (second right) of Owlstone Medical

Owlstone Medical, which has also forged an important alliance with China recently, took the ScaleUP of the Year accolade for accelerating trials and demand for its disease breathalyser.

Tim Minshall Business Weekly Awards
Professor Tim Minshall, Head of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM)

Paul Mason of Innovate UK and Tim Minshall from the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge University each spoke at the event which also raised important funds for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. That was due in no small part from handsome prize donations from London Stansted Airport and The Jockey Club in Newmarket.

Business Weekly Awards guests
Guests at the Business Weekly Awards

Photographs by Alan Bennett

Newsletter Subscription

Stay informed of the latest news and features