Biomedical Catalyst 2019
The Biomedical Catalyst 2019 Feasibility studies and primer awards have now opened, alongside early and late stage awards.
The Biomedical Catalyst (BMC) funding programme supports UK businesses to test and develop innovative technologies for health and care. It supports ideas for: disease prevention and management; disease detection and diagnosis; and tailored treatments that change a disease or offer potential cures.
The programme, run by Innovate UK and the Medical Research Council, provides funding to help UK SMEs speed up the process of bringing new products to market and secure onward investment. The BMC was established in 2012 with the aim of delivering growth to the UK life sciences sector, delivering innovative life sciences products and services into healthcare more quickly and effectively, and providing support to academically and commercially led research and development. Since 2012, the Biomedical Catalyst has awarded more than £250 million in funding to over 300 projects. This funding has been matched by around £150 million in private finance.
Support is available for any life science sector or discipline, including medical technologies and devices, advanced therapies (cell and gene therapies), digital health, drug discovery, and diagnostics. The Biomedical Catalyst has 4 competitions designed to support SMEs to progress projects that are at different stages of development:
1. Feasibility Award
2. Primer Award
3. Early-stage Award
4. Late-stage Award
This is the first time that all four strands of the Biomedical Catalyst will be running concurrently. The competitions open on Monday 21st January 2019 and close on Wednesday 3rd April 2019 at 12:00am.
Feasibility & Primer Awards:
For feasibility and primer awards, UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £3 million to explore and evaluate the commercial potential of a scientific idea to solve a healthcare challenge. This competition combines the feasibility and primer (proof of concept) strands to enable SMEs to apply for projects lasting 3 to 18 months.
The feasibility award is designed for projects that have developed an innovative concept or carried out experimental proof of concept but have not validated the technology. The aim of the feasibility award is to explore and evaluate the commercial potential of innovative ideas. Funding in the primer award is for conducting a technical evaluation of an idea through to proof of concept in a model system.
Read more about feasibility and primer awards.
Early & Late-Stage Awards:
For early and late stage awards, UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £7 million to explore and evaluate the commercial potential of a scientific idea to solve a healthcare challenge. You can apply for this early and late stage competition without needing to go through feasibility and primer.
The aim of the early-stage award is to create a data package that is sufficient to support the testing of your product or process in a clinical setting or other relevant environment. Relevant projects will have already been validated in a laboratory or relevant setting. At the end of the project, the technology will be ready to be demonstrated in a relevant environment. The late-stage award is designed to test a well-developed concept and show its effectiveness in a relevant environment. Projects are expected to build on prior credible research on a product prototype or process. This is likely to have included a demonstration or validation in an appropriate model system.
