Over the next five years, the Department of Health and biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust are joining forces to run the Health Innovation Challenge Fund.

Gap-funding will be up for grabs to enable health bodies, universities and research organisations, start-up companies and businesses in the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, bioinformatics, and engineering sectors to come up with innovative new healthcare products, technologies and interventions.

The scheme is particularly focused on testing and developing new ideas over a three to five-year period until they are either ready for adoption or ripe for follow-on development by other third parties, as opposed to supporting technologies that are close to being, or already are, commercially viable.