Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £25 million in innovation projects. These will be to support UK registered businesses develop innovative solutions to address significant health or healthcare challenges.

The aim of this industry-led R&D competition is to support the development of innovative solutions to health and healthcare challenges.

Your project can focus on:

• disease prevention and proactive management of health and chronic conditions
• earlier and better detection and diagnosis of disease, leading to better patient outcomes
• tailored treatments that either change the underlying disease or offer potential cures
• transforming the delivery of healthcare
• the development of digital health technologies

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

The Industry-led research and development (R&D) stream of the Biomedical Catalyst programme supports pre-market R&D projects. Applicants must be able to demonstrate existing evidence of commercial and technical feasibility.

Applications must show how they will improve the competitiveness and productivity of at least one UK SME involved in the project.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

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Eligibility

Your project

Your project must:

• have total project costs between £150,000 and £4 million
• not exceed a grant request of £2 million
• have at least 50% of the total project costs shared by the SMEs, if collaborative
• start by 1 October 2023
• end by 30 September 2026
• last between 6 months and 36 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. If you have requested an overall grant of over £500,000, and your online application is successful at written assessment, you may be invited to attend an interview.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

Partners must accept terms and conditions (T&Cs) and complete the subsidy question in order for the application to be submitted.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Extenuating circumstances where overseas work may be allowable include, for example; clinical trial in a specific patient population.

You must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. Innovate UK will decide whether to approve your request via email.

The application assessors will be asked to judge whether you have sufficiently made a case for the use of overseas subcontractors.

Number of applications

An SME can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If an SME is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

A large business, academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

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