Introduction

Wellcome Trust Organization in the United Kingdom offers these awards to support researchers who are developing healthcare innovations capable of having a significant effect on human health.

The application for these awards is now open. If you are a researcher working in the field of health, do consider applying for the grant.

Details

Application deadline: You can apply online anytime until the capacity allows

Research area: Healthcare innovation

Duration: up to 24 months for a separate project and 36 months for multidisciplinary contributions

Award value: Usually up to £500,000, or up to £750,000 for multidisciplinary collaborations

Benefits

This award covers:

• Travel cost and subsistence
• Research costs
• Staff cost
• Fieldwork costs
• Materials and consumables
• Clinical research expenses
• Project management costs
• Overseas allowances

More specific details about its benefits can be found through the main link below.

Eligibility criteria

• Researchers who are transforming ideas into healthcare innovations that could have a major and calculable impact on human health are eligible to apply.
• Individuals and teams from nonprofit and commercial organizations can apply.
• Organizations can be of any size, located anywhere in the world (except mainland China).
• Funded organizations must sign up to funder’s grant conditions.
• You can work in any scientific field, including a discipline outside life sciences. It allows work on any type of technology.
• The work that you propose must be critical for developing your healthcare innovation.
• Wellcome particularly encourages proposals from multidisciplinary works within or between organizations. The collaborations do not need to include life sciences researchers.
• If you’re one of its past or current innovations award holders, you can apply for this if you suggest to develop a healthcare innovation that hasn’t been funded.
• If you’ve previously not succeeded in getting Wellcome funding for your healthcare innovation, you must contact Wellcomebefore you apply again. You can’t usually apply again if your proposal has not changed considerably.

Proposal criteria

In your proposal, you must:

• Include researchers from at least two different scientific courses
• Indicate at least one researcher from a discipline other than life sciences, such as (but not limited to) engineering, physical science or data science
• Explain the added value of the collaboration, and indicate why the result(s) of your work will be distinctive and only attainable through this approach.
• Describe the global pressure of the disease or situation that you want to tackle
• The unaddressed healthcare necessity
• The patient population that you want to adress and the impact that your healthcare innovation could have on their health
• Why your healthcare innovation will be considerably better than anything that’s already existing or being developed
• The evidence defending your proof of concept
• What you will undertake with this funding (e.g., key experiments and project deliverables) to move your project on to the next phase of development
• Your team’s expertise and the resources you currently have access to
• Your long-term goals beyond this award should be clarified.

If your research proposal is successful and involves collaborators or partnerships, you must all enter into an agreement stating:

• who will possess any IP that arises from this award
• the necessary background IP licenses
• how you plan to protect and commercialize Wellcome-funded IP.

This agreement has to be effective before the provision of the funding.

How to apply?

You can submit your application online for this award through Wellcome Trust Grant Tracker.

Application Link

You have to consider the following steps:

1. Read the application guidelines on the Wellcome Innovator Awards.

2. Submit your full application to your host organization for approval and review

3. Host organization assesses your application and submits it to the award granter

4. Shortlisting (it will notify you of the result within three months)

5. Review (suitability and competitiveness of your application is important)
6. Final decision

For further details of the innovator Award, please refer to the Wellcome website.