Innovate UK awards £75k grant to Bristol business pioneering fever screening technology

A Bristol-based business has been awarded a £75,000 Innovate UK grant to pivot its thermal imaging technology, developing a fever screening kiosk. 

The product, Harlequin, detects the main symptom of COVID-19 – a high temperature or fever – in 50 milliseconds and is precise to within 0.25°C.

Unlike forehead scanners, this kiosk-based technology can be used while maintaining social distancing and is highly effective when testing larger numbers of people that have congregated together, for example in shopping centres or airports. 

Spookfish Innovations was founded by two engineers who met when working at Hawk-Eye Innovations – the familiar sports technology provider used extensively at Wimbledon and in the Premier League.

“We call this technology real-time machine vision,” says Dr Jouni Ronkainen, Sales Director, Spookfish, “it’s our core competence, including the thermal imaging, and Spookfish really came about because we knew how powerful it could be in a broad range of sectors – everything from coin sorting to pharmaceuticals and sports technologies. 

“We can focus on any activity that has a reliance on measurement or defect detection, especially in cases where recent automation has resulted in the loss of the ‘human eye’ – which is incredibly powerful at spotting errors. Computer vision in combination with machine learning is an effective tool to achieve this.”

Innovate UK Funding for fever screening technology 

When the pandemic struck, the UK Government called on industry to help provide novel solutions or pivot their existing technologies to help address the COVID challenge.

Spookfish responded, working closely with Innovate UK EDGE to pivot its thermal imaging R&D – initially focused on monitoring product defects in production lines – to create its fever screening kiosk.

Funding was deemed critical to the success of the work and Innovate UK EDGE South West’s Access to Funding and Finance Manager, Dr Ben Masheder, identified Innovate UK’s COVID FastTrack funding competition and supported their application.

“We knew we had great tech and knew we could write well but knowing how to actually win a grant is a completely different ball game. Ben’s input was invaluable.”

“Ultimately, the funding meant that we didn’t have to furlough anyone last year and could get this technology off the ground quickly.” 

Harlequin has begun to see high sales in the Middle East and Asia – regions that have not only experienced the challenges of COVID but have suffered previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS, and understand the importance of effective, safe and speedy fever screening. 

Spookfish is now working with EUROCAE, (European leader in the development of worldwide recognised industry standards for aviation), to help create a standard for fever screening passengers when boarding commercial aircraft. 

Growth support from Innovate UK EDGE 

“We founded Spookfish as machine vision engineers,” says Jouni, “and while we have knowledge of IP, marketing, sales forecasting etc, we’re not necessarily experts. That’s where Innovate UK EDGE’s specialists are so useful to us.”

Spookfish is currently overhauling its website, SEO and social media strategy with support from Innovate UK EDGE Marketing Specialist, Maggie Robinson. The company is keen to access new markets and make sure its messaging and offers are reaching the right audience.

“Maggie’s provided some great constructive feedback on our proposals and our social media feed is now far more professional.”

Innovate UK EDGE has also helped Spookfish resolve an IP infringement challenge through IP Specialist, Kate Butler. 

“Kate was quickly able to help us establish that the claims were firstly minor, and secondly only applicable in the US. We don’t have that kind of expertise in house, so it’s been brilliant to have her support.” 

Innovate UK EDGE has also been able to introduce Spookfish to other opportunities, including a high-grade charcoal manufacturer that required a more accurate sorting mechanism. As a result of this introduction, the company has now placed an order for Spookfish’s machine vision cameras. 

Spookfish now plans to continue its work with Innovate UK EDGE to reassess its strategic positioning and revise its financial forecasts and cash flow requirements.

For now, however, the company is focused on working with Innovate UK EDGE to roll out its fever screening kiosk technology to the travel and entertainment sector, large employers, Local and National Government, airports etc. both here in the UK and internationally.