Designed for Ageing – Listen to our interview with Julia Glenn from Innovate UK

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Designed for Ageing – Listen to our interview with Julia Glenn from Innovate UK about this new competition and hear from Blackwood who have received funding through the previous Healthy Ageing Trailblazer competition. Access everything you need to know about this competition.

Innovate UK have announced the launch of the Designed for Ageing competition. Building on the previous Healthy Ageing Trailblazer competition, this £14.4m fund has embedded design led thinking into the structure of the competition. The competition is looking for service led innovation across four broad themes;

• enables self-care and new models of care for independent living
• encourages sustaining physical activity for people aged 50 and over, including for instance, active travel
• improves mental health
• addresses the ‘common complaints’ of ageing, for example, incontinence, pain, mobility, hearing and eyesight

The competition opened on the 20^th September and applications must be submitted by the 17^th November.

This is an exciting opportunity for a wide range of organisations to secure between £0.5m – £2m funding in innovation that has clear commercial opportunity in the rapidly expanding Healthy Ageing market.

In our experience at Venbridge, building on existing, evidenced collaborations or partnerships will be important to successful applicants.

For Jess Lancashire, founder of Venbridge ‘this is an exciting fund which brings design led thinking to the core of the competition. The challenge for potential applicants will be identifying the development programme for an existing service led innovation that the funding would cover from April 2022 for up to two years.  The way in which this development programme can leverage and build on the initial six month design stage gate in the competition will be an important part of the story you tell in your application.’

Find out more by listening to our podcast where we are joined by Julia Glenn from Innovate UK who tells Jess the story behind this new competition and we hear from Colin Foskett and Ryan MacDonald from Blackwood Group which received part-funding for an innovative project is being to create three unique ‘communities of the future’ which will help older people in Scotland to live longer, healthier, independent lives.

If you’re interested in finding out more, here are some useful resources.

Answers to the top 5 most frequently asked questions

How to answer the top-level questions

The application questions in more detail

4 questions to ask yourself before applying

What makes a good innovation team?

7 tips for a winning business plan

Making the most of the UK Innovate application system

Good application guide

For those based in Wales, on the 29th September the Welsh Government, together with KTN and Innovate UK, will be holding a webinar briefing on the “Designed for Ageing“ Competition, part of the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge. Designed for Ageing is a grant funding opportunity for UK companies looking to develop innovations to help people as they age. Find out more about scope, and about how to apply, by registering for the webinar at the link below:

Designed for Ageing Briefing Webinar