In recent years there has been a
fantastic increase in the appetite of scientists to engage in translation and
innovation. Earlier this year, Wellcome together with the Royal Society,
Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Academy of Engineering, set out a
series of commitments - "Transforming
UK Translation”. This is incredibly encouraging
and something to celebrate and build on.
I am convinced that there is so much
more that can be done - starting by
making it easier for researchers/teams
to translate their finding or discovery forward to real world impact. For Wellcome this is an imperative - we fund
a lot science - so we want to make sure that there is every opportunity for the
great scientific discoveries to be used to help people around the world.
One of the core aims of our innovation strategy is to make the transition
between science and translation much, much easier.
To help make this happen the Innovations
team have launched a new set of
partnerships with six universities to help encourage and stimulate translation
within their ecosystems.
With our partners we are developing a
variety of activities (seed funds, mentorship, entrepreneurs in residence, etc)
that will help encourage and increase translation - particularly but not
exclusively - for Wellcome supported scientists.
These are genuine partnerships - we work
together and will make joint decisions on funding - and will agreed a set of
success measures. In addition to providing some financial support, Wellcome
will also provide additional resources including access to our network of
advisors, experts and mentors. We will hold regular meetings for the partners -
to encourage interaction between them, share good practice and we will help
with introductions to other potential partners, funders and investors to help
take promising advances beyond the early stage.
We will continue to identify new
partners because in the long term we want to build a broad global network of
translation and innovation. We hope that together we can share experience,
learn from each other and develop new models of collaboration.
The purpose is simple - to make
translation and innovation happen faster, more effectively and with much
greater impact.