Sensor City, Liverpool’s £15 million technological innovation centre, is pleased to welcome its first tenant. K-Safe Ltd, the creators of MiBB, an innovative personal safety product, will take up residence in the purpose-built innovation centre when it opens in June 2017.
Sensor City is creating a growing community of sensor-related companies and will support members as they develop and implement novel sensor systems, integrating sensors, firmware and advanced algorithms.
Sensors for safety
K-Safe Ltd is one such company. Founded by Liverpool graduates Kirk Ryan and Aaron Lloyd (award-winning participants in the latest Entrepreneurial Spark programme in Manchester), K-Safe is the creator of MiBB, which stands for My Black-Box. Inspired to create MiBB when a friend was injured while cycling, the pair set to work creating a platform that could ensure its users get the fastest possible medical assistance and lower back pain relief, using the latest cloud services and the company’s own innovative blockchain and sensor technologies. It provides great value to insurers by lowering the cost of claims, providing detailed risk scoring and streamlining the claims process.
While MiBB was developed initially for vulnerable road users it has obvious applications for use in other areas including lone worker scenarios, and this is where Sensor City stepped in, with links to relevant validation support. The technical expertise, business know-how and community support on offer at Sensor City persuaded K-Safe to relocate to the new bespoke facility to benefit from support for their venture.
Kirk Ryan, CEO of K-Safe said:
“We are very excited to have taken residence within Sensor City. We were faced with a difficult challenge of choosing the correct location to allow our start-up to grow rapidly, and in particular surround ourselves with the support networks to allow us to focus on technology and innovation.
“Before we found Sensor City the only viable locations for a sensor start-up company were London or the US, but with the industry-leading facilities and strong links into local and regional industry and education, Sensor City quickly became part of our strategy.
“As graduates of Liverpool universities we are immensely proud to bring the opportunity to work with bleeding edge technologies such as Internet of Things, blockchain, fintech and cloud services to the city, and more importantly, to work closely with the universities to ensure that the talent and skills produced within Liverpool are able to gain industry experience that is very hard to come by.”
Dr Joanne Phoenix, Business Development Manager for Sensor City said:
“We are delighted to welcome K-Safe into the community and are working hard to ensure that they are tapped into the most appropriate support from both the academic base and local SME community, with a number of collaborations already under discussion. What impressed me with K-Safe was the professionalism of the team and their knowledge of cutting edge software design. The fact that this is being applied to a situation which had a real personal link for them really brought a human element to the story and it is great to see that there are many other avenues opening up for them as they gain momentum”
The Sensor City facility, located in the Copperas Hill redevelopment area and part of the University Enterprise Zone, is a joint venture between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). It aims to create 1,000 jobs and 300 new businesses within the next decade and promote further industry – academic collaboration in its bespoke 2,500m2 building.