Huge appetite for medical engineering in the UK
27 October 2008
A £45 million fund set up by the Wellcome Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for multidisciplinary projects in medical engineering has had an overwhelming response - the total cost of funding all 45 preliminary applications would have passed £500m.
Richard Seabrook, Head of Business Development at the Wellcome Trust, said: "We're delighted with the response to this scheme, launched by Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC in March 2008. We've got a short list of proposals and will be announcing the successful awards in spring 2009.
"Each of these major awards will establish a medical engineering hub that will drive innovation by putting clinicians, biomedical research scientists and engineers together in labs to solve the big challenges in medicine today. Their solutions could be new devices, imaging, nanotechnology, software, or something we can't yet predict.
"What's clear is that there is a rich pool of researchers more than willing to cooperate in this field. We believe a multidisciplinary approach stands a better chance of generating innovation in healthcare, so we need to address how to support more of these collaborations. Medical engineering is a core activity for us, and although the specific call relating to the £45m fund is now closed, we would stress that such medical engineering projects are eligible to apply for funding through the Wellcome Trust's general Translation Awards."
John Wand, head of EPSRC's Towards Next Generation Healthcare Programme, said: "EPSRC is also very pleased with the response, which has seen interdisciplinary groups of researchers come together in ways that EPSRC and the Wellcome Trust have not seen before. This clearly indicates the value of the joint initiative in fostering these novel partnerships.
“Working with the Technology Transfer arm of the Trust also means that we have a good route through to effective translation of the research that we support through this initiative."
See the Wellcome Trust’s Technology Transfer pages for more details on translational research funding available.
Image: Oliver Burston, Wellcome Images.
Contact
Michael Regnier
Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
T +44 (0)20 7611 7262
E
m.regnier@wellcome.ac.uk
Notes to editors:
The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600m each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK’s main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. The EPSRC invests around £800m a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone’s health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC also actively promotes public awareness of science and engineering. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK.