Wide-scale funding opportunities for life sciences

Government business support group Innovate UK is offering a range of funding for innovations and services across the life sciences sector.

The agency is offering a range of competitions that businesses can enter into for the chance to win funding towards developing innovative solutions for various medical applications.

Amongst these is a £1.6 million investment for UK businesses to work with Indian partners on healthcare and technology solutions in India. Businesses applying for the investment should be working on societal challenges in areas such as clean technology, affordable healthcare and electronic system design and manufacture technology solutions.

Businesses developing new biological devices and materials can apply for a share of £750,000 being offered by The Centre of Defence Enterprise.

The Centre of Defence Enterprise is seeking novel transparent materials and adhesives and interlayer materials to use with transparent materials which could be used in the military as better protection for soldiers. The top ideas could potentially get up to a share of £1 million for further development.

A Small Business Research Initiative competition is also available, offering £450,000 for innovative technology and digital platforms that improve dermatology care. The competition is being held in two phases where £150,000 will be allocated for the first phase, followed by phase 2 where £300,000 will be allocated.

On a larger scale, a funding opportunity provided by the European Union as part of the Horizon 2020’s research fund is investing in a range of technologies offered by businesses, such as satellite computers, cloud computing and personalised medicine.  

The programme is investing €400,000 million across 14 different initiatives and whilst there is concern over the UK’s position in the EU, the UK government has stated that it would underwrite payment of awards even when projects continued beyond UK membership.