January 2018 Sector Competition: Strand 1, Health and Life Sciences
UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £19 million to develop innovations in health and life sciences or emerging and enabling technologies. A further £12 million is available for KTPs. This competition has 2 strands; this is the health and life sciences strand, the other strand is emerging and enabling technologies.
Competition opened: Monday 22nd January 2018
Competition closes: 12 noon on Wednesday 28th March 2018
THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED
Health and Life Sciences Grant Funding Competition – Overview
In this strand of the competition, Innovate UK will invest up to £9.5 million in innovation projects that inspire new products, processes and services. These should address challenges in health and life sciences. (A further £9.5 million is available in the Emerging and Enabling strand).
The aim of this Health and Life Sciences grant funding competition strand is to help businesses to develop innovations that lead to increased agricultural productivity, enhanced food quality and sustainability or improved healthcare outcomes.
Project Requirements
Innovate UK are looking to fund a portfolio of projects, across different technologies, markets and technology maturities. These may include feasibility studies, industrial research or experimental development.
Projects must show significant innovation in one of the following priority areas:
- increasing agricultural productivity
- improving food quality and sustainability
- advanced therapies (cell and gene therapies)
- precision medicine
- medicines discovery
- advanced biosciences
To be eligible for funding you must:
- be a UK based business, academic, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
- carry out your project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results in the UK
The lead organisation must claim funding through this competition. If the project is collaborative, at least one other organisation in the consortium must also claim funding.
All projects must involve an SME. Only an SME can lead projects with costs up to and including £100,000.
Any one business or RTO may lead on one application and partner in a further 2 applications. If a business is not leading an application, they can be a partner in up to 3 applications. An RTO can only lead a project if no business in the consortium has the capacity to lead the project.
Project Size
Project total costs should be between £50,000 and £2 million. Projects should last between 6 months and 24 months. Projects lasting up to 12 months should start by August 2018, and projects up to 24 months should start by December 2018.