The programme’s goal is to fund a portfolio of Indian pilot projects targeting innovations in multi-disciplinary areas comprising electronics, engineering, medical devices, healthcare, software, algorithms and information technology to enable fast paced development in medical electronics
By EB Bureau
The Industry Innovation Programme on Medical Electronics (IIPME) is a collaborative project between the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, government of India.
The project’s goal is to fund a portfolio of Indian pilot projects targeting innovations in multi-disciplinary areas comprising electronics, engineering, medical devices, healthcare, software, algorithms and information technology, to help the medical electronics fraternity and to bring about fast-paced research and development in this area. The idea is to provide funding support to applicants for them to test their bold ideas, mentorship from various subject matter experts, networking platforms and an opportunity to scale up their technology. Under this project, support will be provided at the seed, early transition and the ‘transition to scale’ stages.
Seed grants: This is to fund projects that are at the initial stages of the product development cycle. These awards do not require preliminary data and are meant to provide an opportunity to test particularly bold ideas. A grant of up to ₹ 500,000 for a period of 18 months can be provided in this category.
Early transition: This category is for projects that have established the proof-of-concept and require incremental prototype innovations and validation. These awards are for small risk projects which are at the early stages of translational research. A mix of a grant and loan not exceeding ₹ 10 million over a period of 24 months can be provided in this category.
Transition to scale: This funding is for projects that have already shown promise while establishing the proof-of-concept and have generated enough validation data. These awards require demonstration of detailed preliminary data and are meant to provide an opportunity to develop, refine, and rigorously test approaches that have previously shown promise in controlled or limited settings. A mix of grant and loans for a period of 24 – 36 months is proposed. The project cost will be matched equally by government funds.
The first call for proposals was announced in the month of June 2015 and 14 projects have been selected for funding. The programme has again invited proposals from June 10, 2016 and will be open for acceptance till midnight of March 10, 2017. The focus areas of the programme are imaging and navigation, technologies to address chronic diseases, the convergence of medical devices and bioinformatics, and to increase the outreach through medical electronics.
For further information, please visit the BIRAC website at http://www.birac.nic.in or contact Dr P.K.S. Sarma, head, technical at [email protected].
Source: Electronics India e-newsletter, MeitY, July-September 2016
