Third Age Therapeutics solution supports older people who are at risk from loneliness, anxiety and depression.
Through weekly telephone sessions with a trained therapist, users can work with the health professional to build a personalised action plan that supports their mental health and provides an alternative to using medicine.. The company was part of the 2024 cohort on our Propel@YH digital accelerator programme that brings the best digital health innovations to market, with the Yorkshire and Humber region the first to make use of them.
Why did you join the Propel@YH programme?
As an organisation, we want our research to have an impact. In Yorkshire, we led the world’s largest clinical trial to combat loneliness and promote mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome of this means we can now use behavioural medicine and remote support to prevent loneliness and depression – and we want to bring this into routine NHS care. The Propel@YH programme was just what we were looking for to enable scale and spread of our innovation for older people.
How did the programme help?
The programme has helped Third Age Therapeutics in two ways. Firstly, it has helped us to chart a pathway into the NHS. It’s difficult to know where to start as an academic or clinician in bringing innovative solutions into a large complex organisation like the NHS.
Secondly, it gave us the opportunity to meet some great people in the innovation cohort. We share ideas and discuss the challenges of running a startup and securing funding. The camaraderie is amazing – we all help solve each other’s problems and find solutions. There is a ‘hive brain’ with shared learning, and amazing diversity among my co-founders. I cannot recommend the programme highly enough.
What was the most useful part of the programme?
The Propel@YH team is so supportive and knowledgeable. The 1:1 mentorship and the workshops help us to move an idea into a workable plan to achieve scale and spread. We have made so much progress in such a short period of time. The other element worth highlighting is the Propel@YH partners – they are really at the top of their game and are incredibly knowledgeable and supportive. I also now know a lot more about the digital and innovation ecosystem in Yorkshire, something that I had little knowledge of before I joined the programme.
Third Age Therapeutics has been introduced to some of the best in the business. We all want Yorkshire and the Humber to be a nexus for innovation in the NHS. There is a sense of regional pride and recognition of the importance of the health-knowledge economy.
What have you been doing since the programme?
We have been busy with three things:
- We have been working with Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber and its Innovation Hubs to find the right fit for our solution in the NHS and social care. We have secured pilot implementation projects to help demonstrate the value of our solution to NHS patients.
- We want to enhance scalability by further embracing digital opportunities. Propel@YH helped us to partner up with local digital creators and to seek funding to support this.
- Finally, we are seeking investment after Propel@YH has helped us to sharpen our business plan.
Simon Gilbody is a Co-Founder of Third Age Therapeutics and Professor of Psychological Medicine at the University of York and Hull York Medical School.