Grant to Help Lift Collaborative Healthcare in the East

The European Regional Development Fund (EDRF) has awarded £1million to Health Enterprise East (HEE) to support delivery of its MedTech Navigator programme, a range of events, initiatives and market reports aimed at driving innovation in the East of England.

Despite significant research expertise amongst the 125,000 NHS employees in the East of England, collaboration with SMEs – who could provide solutions to unmet needs in the NHS – so far remains limited. MedTech NAVIGATOR will be used to build and revitalise these connections over a three year period stimulating economic growth in the East of England and beyond. 

The programme’s first research theme is Respiratory Disease, following a report by HEE into the landscape for respiratory conditions such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), asthma and lung cancer within the NHS. The inaugural workshop took place on 6th February 2020 with nearly 40 attendees, and was an opportunity for clinicians, SME innovators and patients to explore areas for collaborative product development.

Looking ahead, the HEE will launch Innovation Grants to support companies seeking to engage in new research and innovation with clinical and academic partners. Finally, the programme will also involve the development of MedTech CONNECT, an online database that will allow SMEs to easily identify and make contact with clinical experts who are willing to collaborate with industry partners.

Commenting on the official launch of MedTech NAVIGATOR, Joop Tanis, Director of MedTech Consulting at HEE, said: “In our experience, effective partnerships lie at the heart of successful medtech innovation. All too often, clinicians and developers with good ideas fail to connect and as a result potentially great innovations don’t make it off the drawing board. The MedTech NAVIGATOR is designed to make collaboration between NHS and industry innovators as seamless as possible, facilitating introductions and knowledge sharing at the very earliest stages of product development.

“The significant interest in our first workshop and the enthusiastic feedback we received are further evidence of the strong appetite for this kind of collaboration. What the MedTech NAVIGATOR will do is to harness expertise from all quarters and thereby act as a launchpad for innovation. We are thrilled to be working with the European Regional Development Fund to deliver this programme and are excited to find out what lies ahead.”

More information on the programme can be found at www.medtechnavigator.co.uk