Biomedical Catalyst

AI in Health

Accelerator Programme

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to solve complex, unmet healthcare problems that are beyond the scope of conventional healthcare

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Bring your AI innovations to healthcare markets

AI in health is a rapidly growing field, with evolving regulatory and ethical considerations. This programme, funded by Innovate UK, in collaboration with the Medical Research Council, as part of the Biomedical Catalyst, can help aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs bring their AI innovations to healthcare markets through expert commercial support and access to grant funding.

AI in Health Accelerator
AI in Health Accelerator

Benefits of joining the AI in Health Accelerator

You’ll have access to:

  • Introduction and application of proven tools, delivered by experts with experience supporting academic spinouts and commercial ventures
  • Workshops to de-risk the commercial and technical viability of their projects
  • Dedicated 1-1 coaching from a life sciences commercialisation expert
  • Access to 250+ key life sciences, pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals in our expert network
  • Talks from AI health founders, investors, grant funding specialists, product development experts and IP lawyers
  • Up to £7,500 for customer discovery and digital testing
  • Access to closed grant funding competition from Innovate UK up to £100k
  • Equity investment upon programme completion for top performers

Key dates and workshops for the AI in Health Accelerator

Pre-Accelerator Workshop

29 Oct – 1 Nov / 5 – 9 Nov

You’ll be introduced to proven entrepreneurial methods that de-risk the commercial viability of life sciences start-ups. Then, you’ll use the tools and techniques to undertake rigorous customer discovery, testing key assumptions about your idea and value proposition.

Accelerator

15 Jan – 5 Mar 2025

Work 1-1 with a dedicated coach and attend weekly sessions to develop your idea into a minimum viable product. You’ll meet esteemed figures from the life sciences industry with expertise in AI, to offer advice and guidance on investment, market adoption and scale-up.

Investor Showcase

Pre-seed to series A

You’ll receive an invitation to Pioneer Group Alumni and Investment Showcase events to meet 40+ leading life sciences investors in the UK and start-ups in the wider Pioneer Group ecosystem.

Grant Funding Opportunities

Closed Competition

You’ll receive exclusive access to a closed grant funding competition for an award of up to £100k for developing your product, process or service in Health AI. This will be funded by Innovate UK’s Biomedical Catalyst, in collaboration with the Medical Research Council.

Programme Partners

Innovate UK

Medical Research Council

Helix Way

Supported by

Innovate UK Business Connect

Mills & Reeve

Frequently asked questions

To be eligible, applicants must meet the following criteria:

  • Be a UK-based SME, according to Innovate UK definitions, or an academic/researcher in the early stages of forming an SME
  • Be developing an innovative project or process in the AI in Health space
  • Be interested in grant funding to support exploring your technology’s commercial viability and product development

We define AI in health as the application of novel AI technology to best solve an unmet need in one of four broad categories of health – clinical healthcare, pre-clinical healthcare, health services management and public health.

Yes, you will benefit from the programme and be eligible for the grant funding as long as you plan to spin out.

  • The potential applications of AI technologies in healthcare is widespread and not easily defined. Pioneer Group has categorised technology applications into four broad categories, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
  • Clinical healthcare includes technologies used by clinical staff to aid in the management of patients. Areas include clinical decision-making and treatment, predictive medicine, patient data and diagnostics.
  • Pre-clinical healthcare includes technologies used in fields such as drug discovery, biomedical research, pre-clinical testing, computational biology and bioinformatics.
  • Health services management includes technologies which improve scheduling, medical record transcription, billing, recruitment, insurance claims.
  • Public health includes technologies that target disease forecasting, risk prediction, spatial modelling, public health surveillance and pandemic/epidemic modelling.

The Pre-Accelerator will take on a maximum of 40 projects. Based on the pitch day, 20 projects will then be selected onto the Accelerator Programme and will qualify for the closed grant funding competition. These 20 projects will be broken into two parallel streams. One stream for projects that have already founded a start-up and one for projects still in the academic phase. Both project types will benefit from the Programme and the parallel streams will allow for pitching the content with the appropriate focus.

We’ll be delivering separate Pre-Accelerator Workshops for each stream of project. One for projects that have already founded a start-up and one for projects still in the academic phase. The Pre-Accelerator for the academic stream will be delivered 29 Oct – 1 Nov, and the start-up stream will be delivered 5 – 9 Nov.

No, the Accelerator Programme is equity-free and cost-free.

We will need you to take four days for the Pre-Accelerator Workshop, and the Accelerator Programme requires half a day of your time, once a week for 8 weeks. Some of these sessions will be delivered in person in London and will be mandatory to attend. The 1-1 sessions with your coaches and additional work can be done at a time to suit you.

The projects that successfully graduate from the Accelerator Programme will be eligible to enter the closed grant funding competition based on the outcome of which may receive up to £100k in grant funding.

Applications have now closed

Should you need to contact the team, please email accelerator@thepioneergroup.com