Funding opportunity
The UK Department of Health is staging a competition for early stage businesses with technologies that are relevant to combating healthcare-associated infections. The National Institute for Health Research will procure up to £750,000 of development work per project, supporting development and testing prior to commercial procurement.
Developments are 100 per cent funded and focused on specific identified needs, increasing the chance of exploitation. The competition is part of a reformed Small Business Research Initiative. An earlier pilot of the scheme is being run by the Department of Defence.
Suppliers for each project will be selected by an open competition. They will retain the intellectual property generated from the project, with certain rights of use retained by the Department of Health.
The specific technologies that the Department of Health wants to fund are ones for improving hand hygiene effectiveness, compliance or both, in hospital wards and pathogen detection in the hospital environment without needing to send samples to a central laboratory.
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