By Tom Foley.
Innovate UK is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. They work with people, companies and partner organisations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy. With a strong business focus, they attempt to drive growth by working with companies to de-risk, enable and support innovation. Health is a key sector for Innovate. They generally fund, initial human proof-of-concept studies, demonstration of clinical effectiveness, demonstration of safety (including phase I and II clinical trials), developing production mechanisms, prototyping, market testing, intellectual property protection. Current programmes include, a £12m Biomedical Catalyst and more focused projects such as £55k for innovative data analytics projects that support clinical decision making in emergency care. These programmes could be important in scaling and commercialising LHS technologies.