UK: First call in £100M health translation programme

Funding opportunity

The UK Department of Health and the research charity the Wellcome Trust have invited bids for the first call of the £100 million Health Innovation Challenge Fund, which aims to fill the funding gap between research institutions and the market, to stimulate the commercialisation of technologies that could be applied in the UK’s National Health Service in 3-5 years.

The first call, ‘Advancing Genetic Discoveries into Clinical Practice’, with funding of up to £20 million, aims to find clinical applications of the information generated by genomics.

Mark Walport, Director of the Welcome Trust, said, “Our partnership with the Department of Health should provide a valuable catalyst to stimulate the research community to apply their ideas and emerging technologies to patient care. The call for proposals in medical genetics is timely and important, given the tremendous pace of developments arising from the application of genome sequencing to improved understanding of human variation in health and disease.“

The Health Innovation Challenge Fund is a scheme of up to five years supported by up to £100 million, with half from the Department of Health and half from the Wellcome Trust.

For more information, and details of how to apply, visit the Health Innovation Challege Fund website: http://www.hicfund.org.uk/