Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the budget (a) allocated from central Government to and (b) awarded by the Small Business Research Initiative for healthcare was in each financial year since its inception.

George Freeman

The Department has run a number of competitions under the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) and has had a budget as follows: fiscal year 2012-13 £2 million; fiscal 2013-14 £5 million; fiscal 2014-15 £2 million and fiscal 2015-16 £6 million. The Department has awarded contracts valued as follows:

2012-13: £1.07 million, the Department also contributed £1 million to other health related SBRI competitions.

2013-14: £5.59 million

2014-15: £10.15 million

It should be noted that SBRI is now firmly embedded within NHS England’s Small Business Research Initiative for Healthcare (SBRI Healthcare). Hence, the Department has not launched any new competitions since 2013.

SBRI Healthcare was established in 2013 by NHS England. As such, NHS England is responsible for setting this programme’s budget, which it has done as follows: fiscal year 2013-14 £10 million; fiscal 2014-15 £20 million; fiscal 2015-16 £20 million. The budget, once allocated to SBRI Healthcare, is then delegated to the Academic Health Science Networks to manage the implementation of the programme.

NHS England has awarded contracts valued as follows:

2013-14: £13.49 million

2014-15: £22.29 million

2015-16: £15.94 million to-date.

Further assessments are due to take place this month which could result in additional awards of around £1.6 million.

The level of investment in SBRI Healthcare reflects NHS England’s ongoing commitment to promoting innovation in the National Health Service and United Kingdom economic growth.