This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
New £1.2m health tech development fund up and running
The Health Social Innovators Programme aims to support the development and growth of early-stage social ventures that offer potential to deliver “tangible and significant” social and healthcare benefits to the public.
The partner organisations running the Programme said at a London launch event that they plan to find between seven and ten promising young UK health IT firms to support both financially and with mentoring.
In practical terms, that translates to at least £40,000 worth of seed-funding per winning contender - accompanied by access to a special four month long executive development and health sector fact-finding opportunity.
The key areas of focus for The Health Social Innovators Programme include finding tech aids to combat mental health, dementia, diabetes, healthy aging and addiction (including alcohol and substance misuse) issues.
The Programme is being part-funded by the Cabinet Office′s Social Incubator Fund to the extent of £600,000, with the balance of the £1.2m coming from pharmaceutical company Janssen Healthcare Innovation and the Trafford Housing Trust.
What may be very encouraging news for candidate firms, if they do not make the first round (October 2014-February 2015), is that they may have a chance to get on the second round, set to commence in Autumn of next year.
Budding health tech Steve Jobs types are being invited to enter the bidding process now, say the Programme′s organisers – the commercial spin-off arm of University College London (UCL), investment group Numbers4Good and incubator Healthbox.
“UCL Business is committed to the development of social ventures as a further mechanism to support the translation of UCL and its associated hospitals′ innovative knowledge base into products and services that can deliver substantive benefits to society,” commented Dr Steven Schooling, UCL Business Director of Physical Sciences, Engineering, Built Environment & Social Sciences.
“We are therefore delighted to be announcing the first call for applications to the Health Social Innovators′ Programme and look forward to receiving proposals from ventures whose activities are seeking to address significant health and wellbeing challenges.”
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