£100m fund for small tech firms to help public sector

Public sector funds small business technology ideas

The government-backed Technology Strategy Board is providing £100m funding to small businesses in an effort to improve public services through innovative new technology.

The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) will be used to fund development of new products and services in areas such as healthcare, defence, transport and construction, specifically for the public sector and specifically by British firms.

The scheme was trialled in 2008 when the Department of Health invited firms to develop technologies to improve hand hygiene, to reduce the number of infections contracted in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries.

The fund should be a boost for small research-oriented firms currently struggling in the UK due to the lack of available credit.

“There are lots of novel and exciting ideas out there and SBRI enables the public sector to seek out these innovative ideas and then support turning them into commercial, viable products and services,” said head of SBRI Mark Glover.

“The business develops a highly commercial and valuable new product, the public sector gets a product that helps it solve a problem and meets its needs, and the country gets improved services.”

Public sector organisations will tender for technology ideas which they could then buy and deploy to help improve public services. The East of England Strategic Health Authority is to launch three SBRI competitions this month, one to help manage patients with long-term conditions, another to enable better patient monitoring and another for technologies to encourage children to take more exercise.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is also using SBRI and is inviting firms to develop novel lightweight technologies and materials that reduce the weight carried by soldiers, for example, weapons and ammunition. The MoD is also inviting ideas for highly mobile robotic support vehicles.

Twenty funding competitions will be launched this year, worth a total of £40m, and this will expand to 50 competitions, worth more than £100m, by 2011.

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body, established and funded by the government, whose role is to promote and support development and exploitation of technology research. It is sponsored by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills.