SBRI Healthcare and NIHR i4i have launched a venture capital readiness programme, to support female founders to scale their innovations across health and social care.
Offering a six-month programme designed for female founders to access the tools, networks, and knowledge required, the programme aims to support those tackling healthcare challenges with an innovative solution.
“This is not just another accelerator,” the programme states. “It’s a bespoke programme designed to address the specific challenges that female founders in health and social care face when accessing investment.” Women accepted for the programme will receive support in learning about different funding options and avenues for investment, along with the ability to connect with investors to help fund their ideas.
The programme also offers “expert mentorship” from successful innovators, finance specialists, healthcare leaders and entrepreneurs, with help provided on business plans and pitching to potential investors. At the end of the programme, a dedicated pitch event will see those selected presenting their business to “a room full of angel investors and venture capitalists”, before receiving feedback to inform their next steps for development.
Applicants should be a founder, co-founder or CEO of the business, operating in the health and social care space, and be looking to raise between £200,000 and £2million in the next 12 months. To learn more about the programme and how to apply, please click here.
Funding for innovation from across the health and social care sectors
A collaboration between Health Innovation East Midlands and Health Innovation West Midlands has seen the launch of a new programme designed to support UK tech companies in the development and scaling of “high-potential digital health innovations”. The Grow Digital Health Midlands programme, formerly known as the East Midlands Digital Health Accelerator, is seeking applications for its 2025 cohort, which will focus on two key themes: enhancing NHS productivity and communication, and reducing demand for hospital-based care.
The British Heart Foundation has awarded nearly £230k to University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, for their Appitrator app, supporting “personalised medication recommendations”. According to the trust, the funding will help to further develop an algorithm they have created, which records “key patient data” such as blood pressure, heart rate, weight, and potential side effects and then uses that information to generate personalised medication recommendations. The trust notes that the ultimate aim of this project is to turn their algorithm into a “user-friendly smartphone app” which will allow patients to “manage their symptoms and receive better personalised care”.
Applications have opened for the British Heart Foundation’s Healthcare Innovation Fund, looking to develop ways to transform the delivery of services for people with cardiovascular disease. The fund is looking for ideas that identify unmet needs that require “further scoping and consensus building” around potential solutions, that have been “scoped by an appropriate group of stakeholders and are ready to be tested and evaluated in practice”, or that have already been tested locally and are ready to be scaled.
