West Midlands Innovation Accelerator Opens for Business

Funding streams from a new £33 million initiative to turbo charge innovation across the West Midlands and to bolster the region’s research and development capability were officially launched.

The West Midlands Innovation Accelerator is now inviting businesses to take advantage of the portfolio of support and funding available to develop ideas that can help reinforce the region’s position at the frontier of the UK innovation revolution.

The Innovation Accelerator comes through a share of a £100 million fund set up by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and delivered by Innovate UK in partnership with the West Midlands leadership. The funding will enable businesses to develop new products, processes and services that can spark commercial growth and investment. The scheme will have a particular focus on health and medical technology, clean technology, and a range of other sector specialisms.

The launch, hosted by Birmingham City University’s STEAMhouse innovation centre in Birmingham city centre, saw the announcement of two Innovation Accelerator funding streams that are now up and running and actively looking for businesses to work with.

These included the first round of the Clean Futures Accelerator which is providing grants of up to £50,000, as well as expert support, to businesses with ideas that can make transport greener.

The funding stream, led by Connected Places Catapult, in conjunction with the Black Country Innovative

Manufacturing Organisation and Coventry University, is designed to leverage the region’s rich transport manufacturing heritage, aligning with the West Midlands Plan for Growth to cement the area as home to the Green Industrial Revolution.

The other is the Biochar CleanTech Accelerator which has been set up by Aston University and local industry to develop technology that converts organic material into commercially valuable products. Sawdust, diseased trees and dried chicken litter are among the many waste products that can be transformed into sustainable bioproducts.

The West Midlands Innovation Programme launched the AI and Future Tech Forum, in partnership with Tech WM, to help educate local businesses to adopt and benefit from emerging and disruptive technologies.

Andy Street, mayor of the West Midlands and chair of the WMCA, said: “Innovation is central to one of my key Mayoral missions to restore our status as the fastest growing region outside of London.

“The regional portfolio of projects at this event are a testament to that mission and look to fulfill our ambitions set out in the West Midlands Plan for Growth – a roadmap to unlocking hundreds of thousands of new jobs and to becoming the home of major global companies in this decade.

“I encourage all business interested in new solutions around health, medical and clean technologies to come and talk to the Innovator Accelerator teams and help make their ideas reality, thanks to this new funding.”

Organisations came together to join Medilink Midlands in celebrating the success delivered under the three ERDF funded programmes, INSTILS, SoLSTICE and ACTIS and to find out what is next for the region.

Interim chief executive, Melanie Davidson, advised that a total of £3.5 million in grants was achieved. This funding was able to leverage investment equating to £47 of private investment for every £1 of public funding. Alongside the funding distributed, Medilink Midlands’ Advisers delivered over 8,000 hours of innovation support to regional life sciences organisations.

The business support projects have delivered funding, support, advice, and networking opportunities to companies during the eight years the projects have been in operation.

Davidson said: “The funding has been instrumental in the creation of over 208 high level jobs and we’ve been able to support 391 businesses on a one-to-one basis, with a total of 66 new enterprises created.”

Success stories from East Midlands businesses that have benefited from the funding include BlueSkeye AI, a company that has developed facial recognition AI to be able to detect depression; Neurotherapeutics, creators of a stimulation and monitoring device aimed at alleviating the symptoms of Tourette’s; Blum

Health, which offers bespoke specialist recruitment solutions throughout the healthcare system, and JT Rehab Limited, inventors of the S-Press, which allows patients the ability to continue with their physiotherapy at home.

Paul Cable, CEO of Neurotherapeutics (Neupulse), creators of a medical device aimed at helping sufferers of Tourettes manage their tics, comments on the company’s progress: “We carried out a clinical trial that started in March 2022 and completed in March 2023 and the results of that trial have been absolutely phenomenal. Short term, our goal is to get this device out there. There are so many people who want this device. It will really make a big difference to their lives.”

Other East Midlands-based funding recipients included iethico, a business that has created a technological solution to the supply and distribution of medicine shortages; MumPod, which provides safe and convenient spaces to employers and service providers supporting pregnant and breastfeeding parents; Spirit Health, which works with the NHS to deliver a new way of delivering healthcare to those in the community, and VUIT, a company providing data analytics to healthcare providers to allow better understanding and more targeted practice of health in the community.

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