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Further £1 million invested to support new pilot projects

Three pilot projects will receive a total of £1 million to drive forward new approaches to innovation.

Toshiba Medical Visualisations Systems, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the NHS Innovation Partnership Board, will receive £400,000 to develop a health and wellbeing pilot that will focus on the rapid prototyping and adoption of solutions to inflammatory bowel disease.

CivTech, a digital accelerator which aims to harness innovation in Scotland’s small business and start up technology sector to create new and/or more efficient public services, will receive £200,000. 

£400,000 will be used to support work with Codebase on the development of  a digital pilot in Edinburgh that will focus on scaling up digital entrepreneurs.

Announcing the funding, Minister Business, Innovation and Energy Paul Wheelhouse said:

“We want to support business innovation and to help companies thrive.  The £1 million I am announcing today will make a real difference, such as the use of the public sector to catalyse innovation in projects such as CivTech, the world’s first cross public sector technology accelerator.”

Mr Wheelhouse announced the funding alongside a new Innovation Action Plan for Scotland, aimed at boosting Scotland’s innovation performance to match the levels of the best performing countries in the OECD.

Early priorities will be to:

• Directly encourage more business innovation
• Use public sector needs and spend to catalyse innovation
• Support innovation across different sectors
• Make best use of university research knowledge and talent to drive growth and equip Scotland’s people with the tools and skills needed to innovate

He added:

“We want to create a culture in Scotland that supports ambitious businesses to use innovation to grow.  Our long term ambition is to be in the top quartile of nations in the OECD for innovation active businesses.

“This Innovation Action Plan, developed with stakeholders and the Scotland CAN DO Innovation Forum identifies  early steps we can take to support and encourage innovation:.

“We aspire to see Scotland in the top-quartile in the OECD for productivity and innovation active businesses and recognise that, whilst there has been progress in recent years, there is more that we need to do to further increase levels of business innovation and business expenditure on research and development to improve Scotland’s economic competitiveness and, through that, make the economic gains that will drive sustainable and inclusive economic growth.”

Background

The full Innovation Action Plan can be accessed here: https://beta.gov.scot/publications/scotland-can-do-innovation-action-plan/