3rd September 2012

Wellcome Trust Funding: Health Innovation Challenge Fund (round 7)

This is a parallel funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health to stimulate the creation of innovative healthcare products, technologies and interventions and to facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond.

The Health Innovation Challenge Fund is positioned as a translational funding scheme to accelerate the clinical application of projects that are well advanced along the development pathway.

Its objectives are to:

• Stimulate the development and uptake of innovative products, technologies and interventions for the benefit of patients in the NHS and other healthcare systems
• Support UK-led projects that target unmet, or poorly met, healthcare needs
• Provide translational funding for projects that have demonstrated proof of principle and have the potential for clinical use or adoption within five years
• Take the product, technology or intervention to a stage at which it is sufficiently developed to be attractive to follow-on funders or investors
• Encourage the collaboration of companies, academia and clinicians to better confront today’s healthcare challenges.