Access to Facilities

The Tay Health Tech Collaborative Fund has now launched, and the Access to Facilities within it will be opening soon!

As part of this, the Access to Facilities fund has up to £200,000 to support multiple projects to access University of Dundee and/or Heriot-Watt University research and lab facilities. This will be a rolling call, we expect to fund multiple projects. All projects must be finished by 31 July 2027.

Opening date	This will open shortly, please check back.
Closing date	Until funding runs out

Scope for University of Dundee (UoD)

• Prototypes for lab testing through the Medical Device Manufacturing Centre (contact Andrew Brown (Technology Specialist) for review of relevant manufacturing equipment)
• Prototypes for clinical evaluations
• Requests to the Health Informatics Centre (HIC)
• Requests to SHARE (the Scottish Health Research Register & BioBank)
• Image Guided Therapy Research Facility (IGTRF) for the use of Thiel cadavers
• Guidance on ethics approvals

If you are looking for a facility which is not available here please get in touch to see if this is also something we can provide.

Scope for Heriot-Watt University (HWU)

• Access to manufacturing facilities through the Medical Device Manufacturing Centre (contact mdmc@hw.ac.uk for review of relevant manufacturing equipment)
• Access to accelerating ageing facilities
• Desk studies

Eligibility

• External requests incoming to UoD / HWU from academia or industry.
• Internal requests (UoD / HWU) for new projects.
• Internal requests (UoD / HWU) for existing projects, e.g. to cover costs that were not envisaged at the stage of application and result from a pivot or identification of additional application of the technology.

Eligible Costs

• Facility costs
• Consumables
• Technician time in the facilities

For projects utilising Dundee facilities, costing will be conducted by Tay Med Connect. We strongly advise you to contact Tay Med Connect as soon as possible to gather the information needed for your application. They will also be able to help you to understand the timelines involved if you wish to partner with NHS Tayside and may be able to make introductions to clinicians.

Ineligible costs

• Academic member of staff salary, NHS Consultant salary (i.e. Directly Allocated)
• External partner salaries
• Overhead costs
• New, fundamental research
• Academic publication costs
• Conference fees
• IP and patent costs, including but not limited to registering, maintaining and supporting patents and property rights
• PhD or studentship funding
• Standard desktop computing
• Contributions to KTPs (Knowledge Transfer Partnerships)
• Contributions towards the cost of purchasing equipment with a value over £10,000.

Application Review

Eligible applications will be reviewed by the Tay Health Tech core team and selected projects will be presented for information to the Tay Health Tech Steering Board. Decisions will be made based on:

• Impact on Tayside
• Healthcare need (including the care pathway)
• Value for money
• Commercial potential and sustainability

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