The Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health have announced the Health Innovation Challenge Fund (HICF): a GBP100m five-year parallel funding partnership.
The HICF is intended to stimulate the creation of healthcare products, technologies and interventions and to facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond.
It will have a succession of thematic calls for proposals, each selected to focus on unmet needs in healthcare relevant to the NHS, and will support developments that are within three to five years of launch or adoption.
Advancing genetic discoveries into clinical practice is a key objective of the funding partners and the first theme of the fund, with a specific GBP20m allocation.
The deadline for preliminary applications is 2 October 2009.
