GovWire

The Biomedical Catalyst fund has up to 10 million to invest in innovative projects that tackle some of the biggest healthcare challenges in the world.

Better and more efficient

A growing and ageing population is creating a need for better, more efficient health services.

The fund is a partnership between Innovate UK and the Medical Research Council. It aims to support innovative ideas across the life sciences sector, to make ideas from research and academia a reality.

Support is available across disciplines

Funding support is available in any sector or discipline including:

• stratified healthcare
• advanced therapies, such as gene and cell therapies
• diagnostics
• medical technologies and devices

Projects should develop innovative healthcare products, technologies and processes. This could include projects that aim to:

• prevent disease or manage chronic health conditions
• detect or diagnose disease earlier
• provide tailored treatments that change the underlying disease or offer cures

There are 2 funding competitions being run. These are for:

• feasibility studies to explore and evaluate the commercial potential of early-stage ideas. Up to 2 million is available
• early-stage projects to create sufficient data to support later testing of products in a clinical or other relevant setting. Up to 8 million is available

Competition information

• the competitions open on 26 March 2018, and the deadline for applications is 6 June 2018
• projects must be led by an SME, either working alone or with other SMEs or research organisations
• we expect feasibility projects to have total costs of up to 200,000 and to last between 3 and 12 months
• we expect early stage projects to have total costs of between 250,000 and 4 million and to last between 12 and 36 months
• businesses could attract up to 70% of their project costs
• a briefing event will be held on 4 April 2018