The UK’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has opened applications for a £4 million medtech fund designed to support SMEs in commercialising new products and meeting new regulatory requirements, with up to £30,000 available for successful applicants.
Recognising that SMEs often suffer with a “lack of internal expertise” on the regulatory process, which leads to “a financial and knowledge barrier to many small businesses”, the Rapid Regulatory Support Fund is offering support for activities including regulatory strategy development, mock audits, guidance on standards, quality management systems, global registrations, regulatory training for staff, and more.
To apply, SMEs must be based and registered in the UK, and should be developing, or currently producing and selling, medtech products. They should also have a turnover of no more than £36 million, and total assets of no more than £18 million.
Applications close on 31 October 2024 at midday, but the CPI highlights that if it receives 300 applications before the deadline, applications will be closed early, encouraging interested parties to apply “as soon as they can”.
To find out more about the Rapid Regulatory Support Fund, please click here.
Funding opportunities for health innovation
The last month has seen the launch of a number of different funding pots for health innovators, including a £250,000 fund for innovation and digital tools in wound care, designed to improve outcomes for patients with chronic wounds by supporting widespread adoption of digital wound management in community nursing.
In the mental health space, SBRI Healthcare has announced a new funding competition seeking “work-related digital innovations for individuals with poor mental health”, focusing on supporting individuals to stay in work, return to work, or overcome barriers to workforce entry, and offering applicants up to £200,000 per innovation.
Elsewhere, a Northern FemTech and Women’s Health accelerator from Health Innovation North East and North Cumbria and North East and North Cumbria ICB was launched to support early-stage investment into innovations designed to address the gender gap in women’s health, focusing on female-founded or co-founded businesses.
An announcement from UKRI brought news of £118 million in funding to create new hubs and partnerships to develop health technologies in the UK, with five new hubs to test new technologies and approaches to tackle cancer and other diseases, and hoped to enable the release of new medical tech products onto the global market.
A call for GreenTech in healthcare was also launched by the Health Innovation Hub Ireland, the HSE and Irish College of GPs, aiming to identify products and services capable of promoting environmental sustainability in primary and secondary healthcare.
Innovation and fostering collaboration in the health tech space
At the end of September, we asked our readers in a LinkedIn poll where they thought digital investment should go in the short term, with options including patient-facing tech, cross-organisational workflows, data/analytics/visibility tools, and digitising/removing paper. Attracting a total of 83 votes, the most popular choice was digitising/removing paper, with 35 percent of the vote.
Just last week, HTN welcomed a panel of experts from across the health sector for a webinar to discuss scaling health technologies, focusing on digital projects and programmes successfully scaled at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, University Hospitals of Leicester and University Hospitals of Northamptonshire, as well as approaches, challenges, and how to embrace new models of collaboration and leadership.
HTN also celebrated innovation and collaboration in the health tech space with its Health Tech Awards 2024 winners in categories including best use of data, best solution for clinicians, most promising pilot, innovation of the year, and partnership of the year.
