New technologies to improve health and safety performance

Discovering Safety, a programme run by the UK's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and funded by Lloyd's Register Foundation, is once again collaborating with Safetytech Accelerator for a project aimed at fostering collaboration between regulators, industry stakeholders, and technology companies to explore the potential of new technologies to improve health and safety performance.

Safetytech Accelerator Ltd established in 2021 by Lloyd's Register, is the first fully dedicated technology accelerator, focused on advancing innovation in safety-critical industries and critical infrastructure.

The ‘Smarter Regulation Sandbox (SRS)’ will demonstrate how digital technology can enhance accessibility to health and safety regulatory information in order to accelerate compliance, improve efficiency and productivity, and reduce regulatory burdens on industry, while supporting innovators to bring emerging digital products to market.

The Sandbox, featuring participation from regulatory organisations, industry, and technology providers, aims to create an innovation-friendly environment for:

• Industry to explore how to increase assurance, confidence, and clarity on compliance.
• Regulators with a pro-innovation environment to design smarter interventions.
• Tech companies to understand how to access and utilise smarter regulatory information.

The SRS carries on the good work done in the world’s first Industrial Safetytech Regulatory Sandbox which concluded in September 2023 and proved an effective way to share expert knowledge from research in a collaborative and innovative environment using a Sandbox approach. This project benefitted all parties involved by providing a safe space to explore opportunities for improvements, identify barriers to adoption and suggest how they might be overcome.

The project has been made possible through funding won from the Knowledge Asset Grant Fund (KAGF), run by the Government Office for Technology Transfer (GOTT) and funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). Innovate UK is administering this competition on behalf of GOTT.

Helen Balmforth, Discovering Safety lead and Head of Data Analytics at Health and Safety Executive told us that: “Regtech has the potential to improve the ability of workplaces to comply with health and safety regulations and improve health and safety outcomes but a host of barriers to adoption including regulation, are stifling this opportunity and the adoption of technologies in the workplace. This is, ultimately what we are looking to change. Addressing these barriers requires regulators, innovators, and industry to work together to promote and stimulate emerging technology.”

Maurizio Pilu, Managing Director of Safetytech Accelerator said, “We are thrilled to build upon the success of our previous Sandbox collaboration with HSE as we embark on the journey of launching a second one aimed at exploring how smarter regulation can lead to more efficient and effective compliance and increased efficiency, productivity, and safety in safety-critical industries. “

For project updates and announcements, visit the Safetytech Accelerator website.