Why Long‑Term Innovate UK Support Is Critical for Companies Like ScubaTx
At the end of December, ScubaTx reached an important milestone: we successfully completed our latest Innovate UK (IUK) Combined Investor Partnership grant — our second award through this programme. It marked not just the close of a project, but the continuation of a journey made possible only through sustained, multi‑year public innovation support.
In addition to the Combined Investor Partnership grants, ScubaTx has also benefited from a Biomedical Catalyst award, the Global Explorer and Global Incubator Programmes, and most recently the MedTech Venture Kickstarter. Each of these programmes played a different role at a different moment — but together, they created something far more powerful: continuity.
This continuity is what allows genuinely novel medical technologies to take root, survive, and reach patients.
Why multi‑year IUK funding matters so much in deep‑tech and medtech
Developing a breakthrough technology in organ preservation isn’t a one‑year sprint; it is a sequence of complex, interdependent steps that demand consistent capital, expert validation, and investor confidence. For most early-stage medtech companies, commercial capital alone is rarely willing to finance these multi‑year technical and regulatory pathways.
This is where Innovate UK is unique.
1. IUK fills the “hard years” gap that private investors often won’t
Many innovations fail not because the science doesn’t work, but because the timeline to impact is longer than the timeline of typical venture expectations. IUK funding bridges that gap, allowing teams like ours to:
build early prototypes,
run rigorous lab and preclinical studies,
work with clinical partners,
and develop regulatory‑grade engineering systems.
These steps almost never attract private investment at the outset — yet without them, no breakthrough would ever reach the NHS or global transplant community.
2. Successive grants help build momentum, not just projects
Each IUK programme supported ScubaTx at a different level of maturity:
Global Explorer → early exploration and international market insight
Global Incubator Programme → embedding in the US transplant ecosystem
Biomedical Catalyst → high‑value scientific and technical validation
Combined Investor Partnership (twice) → de‑risking technology for matched private investment
MedTech Venture Kickstarter → accelerating commercialisation readiness
This layering of support is precisely why ScubaTx moved from promising research to a near‑market device platform capable of transforming heart and lung preservation.
3. IUK sends a powerful signal to investors
For ScubaTx, matched CIP funding directly unlocked private capital. Investors take confidence from IUK’s technical diligence, market assessment, and staged approach to readiness levels. In practice, each IUK award amplified:
the quantum of capital we could raise
the quality of investor we could attract
the confidence we could give around regulatory and commercial timelines
This is a perfect example of public–private partnership functioning exactly as intended.
4. Long‑term IUK engagement builds world‑leading UK companies
Breakthrough technologies are rarely linear. They require iteration, clinical dialogue, unexpected pivots, and expert networks. Over several years, IUK didn’t just fund ScubaTx — they helped shape us. Their advisors, assessors, and programme leads challenged us, connected us, and expanded our ambition.
Today, ScubaTx is preparing for regulatory submissions, international clinical studies, and the launch of our advanced hypothermic control platform. This would not have been possible without the structured, sequenced, and long‑term support of Innovate UK.
ScubaTx as a model for long‑term innovation support
We believe ScubaTx represents exactly the type of high‑impact company that multi‑year IUK funding is designed to support:
tackling a globally recognised unmet clinical need
combining novel science with scalable engineering
driving future UK manufacturing and high‑skilled jobs
attracting significant private co‑investment
delivering meaningful impact for patients and the NHS
Our journey shows how well the system can work when public funding is used not as a one‑off booster but as a strategic catalyst for sustainable innovation.
Looking ahead
As we move into 2026 — a pivotal year that includes CE mark submission, ISO 13485 readiness, and preparation for FDA pathways — the foundation laid by Innovate UK continues to underpin our trajectory.
Public funding does more than support inventions. It builds companies. It builds confidence. And ultimately, it builds the innovations that will define the future of healthcare.
ScubaTx is proud to be an example of what sustained UK innovation support can achieve — and even more proud of what comes next.