London Proof of Concept Funds

PARK


Partner Institutions:

· Central School of Speech and Drama

· Thames Valley University

· Open University London Region

· University of Westminster

· Kingston University

· Roehampton University

· Royal Holloway, University of London

· Brunel University

 

PARK is comprised of eight partner HEIs. PARK provides seed funding to early stage projects with commercial potential that can demonstrate prospects of winning third party investment, or realising license income or trading without further PARK support. There are four active funds – the Stimulus fund, POC I fund, POC II fund and PARK II fund. Each fund has its own maximum investment limit; the maximum any one fund may invest in a project is £50,000. The POC II fund is the most recent and funded by the London Development Agency (LDA).

 

Altogether, PARK has a £3.77 million seed fund, £2 million granted by the LDA, the balance from other sources. 


DASH


Partner Institutions:

· Imperial College

· University of the Arts London

· NHS Trust St Marys

· University College London

· National Physical Laboratory

· Royal College of Art

· NHS Trust Charing Cross/ Hammersmith


The DASH is a consortium between Imperial Innovations, UCL, NPL, RCA, University of the Arts, Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary's NHS Trust. The DASH fund has no central decision-making committee for proof of concept applications, rather, money is distributed to each institution and the decision regarding which projects to apply Proof of Concept money to is taken by each institutions own technology transfer office.


Emerald


Partner Institutions:

· London Metropolitan University

· London South Bank University

· University of East London

· Middlesex University

· Goldsmiths College

· University of Greenwich

· Ravensbourne College

· City University


Emerald is a consortium of eight London-based Universities. Emerald is a Proof of Concept fund designed to assist staff and students in the partner institutions to explore the potential of their ideas, inventions or designs to the point where realistic judgement as to the commercial opportunities can be made.

Emerald provides proof of concept awards of up to £40,000 for any one project. The Emerald Fund receives just under £1 million in total from the LDA.


Heptagon


Partner Institutions:

· Queen Mary, University of London

· King’s College, London

· Royal Veterinary College

· London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

· Birkbeck, University of London

· St George’s, University of London

· Institute of Cancer Research

· School of Pharmacy


The Heptagon consortium, which comprises eight partner institutions, was created to encourage commercialisation of technology in the field of life sciences and healthcare.

Heptagon provides Proof of Concept awards for projects up to £75,000 to support the translation of novel and inventive ideas from fundamental research to commercial demonstration. Key project end-points are likely to include proof of principle data packages, animal studies or prototypes, which can add sufficient value to projects to attract licensing deals or investment for a spin-out company.

Heptagon is funded by a £1.75 million grant from the LDA.


NHS Innovations London


In 2006-2007 NHS Innovations London committed £500,000 of Proof of Concept funding to 33 London NHS Trust projects which were selected (using the Xpedite High Throughput IP Management Process) from 116 applications. Areas covered include therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, equipment and software. The awards ranged from £2,000-£50,000, including 2 second tranches of funding for significant therapeutic and cardiac device projects. NHSIL currently has two new funds from the LDA and DTI totaling £1.2 million. There are 3-4 funding application rounds per annum, which receive 20-30 applications.