Life-saving asthma inhaler nets Derry's Susan a Women in Innovation Award

Entrepreneur Susan Kelly is amongst this year’s 50 winners of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards who are developing novel solutions to major social, environmental and economic challenges.

Susan, from Derry, Co-founder of Respiratory Analytics, designed an AI-led respiratory device, aflo™, for those with asthma, after witnessing her partner and two children being hospitalised due to life-threatening asthma attacks. Research shows almost 90% of sufferers do not master the right technique to get the best benefit from their inhalers, and aflo™ has been designed to do this automatically for them.

Commenting on her innovation and award, Susan Kelly of Respiratory Analytics said, “It’s a terrifying thing to witness a family member having a life-threatening asthma attack. Inhaled medications are the cornerstone of asthma management and I’ve seen how difficult it is to get inhaler technique right to optimise these drugs, which is why this innovation was born. It’s been very hard to keep this Innovate UK Award a secret and I can’t wait to get started!”

Each winner will benefit from a £50,000 grant, one-to-one business coaching, and a suite of networking, role modelling, and training opportunities. The awards, which coincide with International Women’s Day (Wednesday 8 March), reflect the government’s ambition to give more support to women innovators and business leaders.

The flagship Women in Innovation Awards is a key part of Innovate UK’s commitment to boosting the number of women entrepreneurs. Innovate UK will give all 50 trailblazers £50,000 and bespoke mentoring and coaching to enable them to scale-up their businesses.

Now in its sixth year, the competition drew a record number of 920 applications from women business leaders.

Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, said: “The Innovate UK Women in Innovation programme is an important part of our many activities to make a real difference to the talent and skills pipeline for UK business innovation by inspiring, involving and investing in greater diversity. I warmly congratulate all the Women in Innovation Award winners and look forward to keeping in touch as they progress.”

Gillian Anderson

Local Democracy Reporter