£75k · Grant · Healthtech · Saltburn-by-the-Sea, UK
Souuthe, a North East England healthtech startup developing calming technology for dementia and palliative-care settings, has secured £75k in grant funding through Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards. The grant will fund clinical testing and regulatory work ahead of planned trials with hospices and NHS trusts.
Founder Lou Willis-Keeler has built the technology into familiar soft objects such as teddy bears and cushions. Souuthe says the product uses steady, comforting physical sensations to help ease anxiety, agitation and emotional distress, drawing on research into nervous-system regulation and sensory grounding. The company’s own site is careful to say the technology is still in development, so the award supports an evidence-building stage rather than a commercial rollout.
Evidence is the route into care settings
Souuthe’s commercial challenge is not simply to make an object that feels reassuring. Hospices, care providers and NHS organisations need evidence that a new intervention is safe, effective and practical to use alongside established care. Funding clinical testing and regulatory work therefore tackles the specific work that can turn an early product into something institutional buyers are able to assess and procure.
The product’s familiar form could lower the barrier to use for people who may struggle with unfamiliar devices or verbal reassurance. But that design advantage remains a hypothesis until testing shows how the intervention performs in real care environments. The grant gives Souuthe non-dilutive capital to generate that evidence without selling equity at this early stage; any later fundraising case should be stronger if trials can translate the company’s calming claims into measurable outcomes.
A grant paired with founder support
Innovate UK named 61 grant winners from a record 1,590 applications, with each receiving £75,000 plus 12 months of training, mentoring and networking. For Souuthe, that support sits alongside the technical work: the company must develop the evidence and regulatory pathway while also preparing partnerships, procurement conversations and its next financing step. The award does not prove adoption, but it provides a defined route to test whether the product can move from an early calming concept into care delivery.
Sources checked:
Bdaily · Innovate UK / UKRI · Souuthe company site · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
