Melo attended the 2024 UK Acquired Brain Injury Foundation summit.
This week, we had the pleasure of attending the UK Acquired Brain Injury Foundation (UKABIF) annual summit, held at the Lowry in Manchester. The event gathered a wide range of voices, from healthcare professionals and innovators, to charities and private sector partners — all working toward improvements in acquired brain injury (ABI) care. Alongside this, we had the exciting opportunity to present Melo at our own stand.
At Sunday evening’s dinner and awards ceremony, we were joined by Dr Alistair Teager from the Salford Royal Neuropsychology team. Our seat at the table was a recognition of the collaborative work we have done over the past two years. We also shared this space with the latest winner of the Mike Barnes Innovation Award, an award that Melo had the privilege to receive last year.
Meeting previous award winners was both humbling and motivating, and the night offered a fantastic chance to celebrate UKABIF’s achievements over the past year. This wonderful sense of community was emphasised further with a night of engaging speakers, and a DJ set from a group of brain injury survivors.
On Monday, we set up our stall at the main conference to introduce attendees to Melo and showcased two poster presentations.
The first outlined our recent Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) activities, with the second focusing on how we’re utilising AI to enhance patient summaries. The conference floor was full of interest in these topics, and it was encouraging to see first hand engagement with our work. Attendees stopped by our stall to see Melo in action, and it was a proud moment for us to demonstrate new features, gather feedback, and let people explore the app.
We were thrilled to connect with professionals from across the NHS, charity organisations, and private sector. In-person discussions are incredibly invaluable, and have already sparked ideas for future collaborations.
Decently co-founder, James Chapman, had this to say about the event:
“As previous winners of the innovation award, it was a great experience. It meant that people knew who we were and what we stand for. It was a great opportunity to catch up with connections we have made over the years, explore new opportunities, and to continue to share the work we’re doing with Melo. ”
Decently co-founder, James Burch, stood next to Melo’s PPI poster
One of the most memorable sessions we attended featured Luke and Ellis Parry, twin brothers and founders of Neumind. We’ve known Ellis for some time, but had not yet had the opportunity to meet Luke. Hearing Luke’s survivor story and learning how it led to the creation of Neumind was deeply inspiring, and reinforced the importance of our own the work, and the ultimately the people we’re doing it for.
Their ambition and drive to improve ABI care aligns so closely with our mission at Melo, and we’re very excited to explore opportunities for collaboration with them in the near future.
UKABIF 2024 has underscored the sense of strength within the ABI community, and we’re incredibly proud to be a part of it.
We look forward to reconnecting with the people we’ve met this year, particularly with those interested in learning more about Melo. This event allowed us to not only share our latest advancements but also to gain invaluable feedback that we will use to shape Melo’s future.
For more information on the posters presented at this year’s summit, feel free to click the images below.
Poster 1: Development of an artificial intelligence chatbot to analyse ‘challenging to manage’ behaviours.
Poster 2: Utilising patient and public involvement and engagement to enhance Melo: a digital health technology in behaviours that challenge.
