The Health Enterprise East (HEE) Development Fund aims to support pre-market development of innovations arising from within the NHS.

It provides financial support to inventors and their Trusts for new medical devices and technologies that require some additional proof of concept, further development or market research studies prior to commercialisation.

In most cases the Intellectual Property in the innovation will be expected to remain with the originating NHS Trust.

Eligibility Criteria

The Development Fund is open to all NHS staff and related members. There is no restriction on the type of innovation that will be considered, as long as it fulfils the criteria below.

In order to be approved a proposal must demonstrate that:

• The project addresses a clear unmet clinical or market need
• There is a credible technical proposition
• There are commercial or technical steps to be taken before the project can be transferred to an industry partner or new company vehicle
• There are clear and credible next steps once the funding is spent (i.e. should lead to further commercial activities not further research)
• Other sources of funding are not available for enabling those steps

The concepts to be proven by the programme could include (but are not limited to):

• Development and manufacture of prototypes
• Technical feasibility studies i.e. gathering data to demonstrate the efficacy of a proposed solution (as opposed to longer term research studies which are not eligible for an award)
• Adding "industrial strength" coding and documentation to software to enable licensing
• Conducting a market feasibility study
• Obtaining regulatory affairs advice
• Writing a business plan