£7.5m secured for health and life science innovators

The initial £7.5m investment from Liverpool Combined Authority will provide start-up funding and commercial advice to help clinicians, academics and entrepreneurs in the health and life sciences sectors. Funding  of between £25,000 and £250,000 will be invested with innovators to develop prototypes, apply for R&D grants, shape their business plans and secure further funding.

Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: “In the Liverpool City Region, we are very lucky to have a cluster of world-class research institutions and a real passion for innovation. I want to take advantage of those strengths and turn them into profitable businesses, creating jobs and prosperity for local people, as well as delivering advances in healthcare that should save and improve people’s lives.

“Our investment to create LYVA Labs builds on the assets of our region’s fantastic health and life sciences sector and will provide the support needed to help turn good ideas into great businesses.

“I’m determined to make our region the country’s innovation engine and, to make that happen, we’ll be investing five per cent of our GVA in Research and Development over the next few years – nearly double the government’s national targets. I truly believe that with the right support we could help take our health and life sciences sector stratospheric.

“By investing now to establish ourselves as a hotbed of innovation and new technology, we’ll be able to create many more high-skilled, well-paid jobs and attract many, many more businesses and opportunities from around the world.”

Lorna Green, founding chief executive of LCR Ventures, said: “The idea for LYVA Labs came about because of the lack of funding for great ideas to improve healthcare; we have fantastic clinicians in the NHS and creative businesses who want to help. Without that early stage funding and professional business advice, these ideas fail to get off the ground.

“We won’t just provide money to the best ideas, we will also advise and support innovators to take their product to the stage at which they can prove its potential and attract further investment.

“We want to see an explosion in innovative, high-growth businesses which will provide opportunities for young people to gain skills, keep our innovative clinicians within the NHS – and ultimately boost our local economy as well as raise standards in healthcare.”