Manchester health tech startup Howz secures £30k accelerator grant

Health tech firm Howz has landed a five-figure grant after winning the EDF Energy Pulse Award for Connected Home and Business.

The Manchester-based startup, which offers a connected home system allowing families to know vulnerable relatives and friends are safe and well, secured the £30k boost upon completing a 10-week development programme with EDF’s innovation accelerator, Blue Lab.

After a morning of pitching to a panel against four other finalists at the energy supplier’s Innovators’ Day in London, Howz was named the winner and will now receive the grant cash along with continued support from the Blue Lab panel.

Howz’ connected home system measures the electricity used in a home and combines this information with data collected through sensors that detect door movement, temperature and light levels.

The system, which is predominantly geared towards elderly people living alone, then uses machine learning to build a daily behaviour pattern and alerts family when a user’s typical routine is broken.

Howz founder and CEO Jonathan Burr said: “The past 10 weeks have been such an eye-opening and valuable experience for the Howz team.

“We’re extremely grateful for the opportunity and to the other finalists who were so open and honest, it became a real shared experience among us all.”

He continued: “Working with the Blue Lab team has been phenomenally beneficial to us; having the opportunity to work with a company that cares about developing ideas for people is something that really resonates with the values of Howz, and we look forward to working more closely with EDF Energy in the future.”

Blue Lab’s director of innovation, Jean-Benoit Ritz, commented: “Howz links energy and people and this principle is at the heart of our mission as an energy supplier.

“Developing solutions and services to help people with energy is really powerful. Howz really took on board all of the help and advice on offer at EDF Energy’s Blue Lab and I would like to congratulate them on their deserved success.”

He added: “We look forward to working with Howz and seeing how we can help customers together.”

Investment firm L Marks is an innovation partner of the Blue Lab accelerator.

Stuart Marks, chairman at L Marks, said: “Our main goal for Blue Lab was to find startups with disruptive, innovative solutions that could really make a difference to EDF Energy operations. What a result! The Blue Lab team have worked with five teams who are all working on fantastic ideas. Howz provide a solution that resonates with us all, the market potential here is huge. They are definitely one to watch.”

The Howz software was created by digital health tech company Intelesant. Last year, the firm secured £27k from the Greater Manchester Academic Health Science Network.