The aim of the challenge was to seek challenges from those working in healthcare to pose problems they encounter in their practice where they envisage technical solutions could be developed. The process was done in 2 stages the first was to collect challenges, the best ideas were then chosen and entered into a funding competition with applications invited from interdisciplinary teams to solve these. In total we have funded 4 ideas, to a maximum of £25.000 each.

The Health Technology Challenge aimed to develop cross sector collaborative research projects focusing on medical technologies that look to translate innovative research in material sciences and engineering towards bio-medical applications. The project was specifically aimed at encouraging cooperation between universities and the NHS and the success of this pilot has inspired us to develop the scheme into an ‘All Wales’ challenge.

The ‘All Wales’ challenge, (which would include us here in the South West, the West and North Wales Academic Health Science Hubs) will also be opened up to Charitable organisations and Businesses, which in turn may offer them the opportunity to expand their contacts within the various trusts, HEI’s and NHS Boards. It would also allow them to identify a project/s that they would like to be involved in.

This ‘All Wales’ challenge will enable us to broaden the contribution of ideas, so that Academics, Health care professionals, Industry and the General public are all involved. Based on this being an All Wales challenge we have confirmation that Tenovus are happy to fund at least 2 cancer related projects through the Health Technology Challenge.