ideaSpace Enterprise Accelerator was founded back in June 2010, with the support from Hauser-Raspe Foundation and the East of England Development Agency. Set up to foster a culture and environment to support early stage ventures with potential global impact in Cambridge and the wider enterprise community, membership numbers have steadily grown highlighting the high demand for its services.

As the months have passed, members from new and continually diverse range of industry have joined, bringing expertise and knowledge together under one roof.

Just a couple of months ago, ideaSpace celebrated its second birthday and now welcomes its 100th member, Tom White of Skin Analytics.

Neil Daly, Director of Skin Analytics explains the unique benefits ideaSpace has to offer, “ideaSpace has been great to us since we started working here. The flexibility of the services offered and the network we were able to access have been critical in getting us where we are today. Through the ideaSpace team or the 99 other members, we have been able to find quality help across a variety of areas such as IP, medical device regulation and legal support”.

Spotlight on Skin Analytics

Skin Analytics is currently developing a cloud-based service to help people monitor themselves for the early warning signs of skin cancer, seamlessly through their mobile, tablet or online.  The five strong team, have teamed up with brains from the University of Cambridge, Professor William Fitzgerald and Dr Elena Punskaya, to develop the latest software that can help detect and monitor suspicious changes on the human skin.

The Skin Analytics service allows the user to make use of their smartphone or digital camera to take photos of their skin. These images are automatically analysed to identify unique characteristics by applying cutting-edge mathematical techniques. Once baseline images are captured, users are helped to submit additional images of each mole after an appropriate period. Skin Analytics will automatically warn the user of any changes detected, which could potentially be the early signs of skin cancer. The service is not meant to be a diagnosis service, but rather an early warning monitoring system that will highlight the need to seek medical advice at the appropriate time.

A significant challenge that Skin Analytics is required to overcome is to enable images taken under different lighting conditions and from different angles, to be compared. Working on the University of Cambridge, West Cambridge site has enabled Skin Analytics to access leading image processing researchers to develop these algorithms.

Skin Analytics are funded by private investors and also by a significant UK government innovation grant. The Skin Analytic service is due to be launched early 2013 in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Listen to the BBC radio interview here.

Further information can be obtained from Neil Daly, Director of Skin Analytics: neil@skinanalytics.co.uk