Scottish Government announces new round of multi-million-pound tech funding

The Scottish Government is to give up to £8m to support a new round of CivTech challenges.

Launched in 2016, the innovation programme aims to find tech-enabled solutions to public sector problems.

This year there are nine challenges, with projects to focus on how technologies can help tackle issues such as firefighters exposure to contaminants and pharmaceutical waste.

Emplyment minister Tom Arthur said: “Driving entrepreneurship and innovation is important to helping unlock each of the Scottish Government’s priorities of eradicating child poverty, boosting economic growth, achieving net zero and improving public services.

“In CivTech, we have a way to stimulate progress across each of these priorities so that, together, we can improve people’s lives and achieve our ambitions as a nation.

“This funding offers a unique opportunity not just to foster and support the innovators and entrepreneurs as part of a vibrant economy, but harness their ideas and inventions to continually test and improve our public services and our way of life.”

Other challenges are to focus on how to improve circularity in the NHS supply chain, and how to enhance public participation in policymaking.

Successful applicants will work with their challenge sponsor to develop their proposal and pitch for a place in the programme’s accelerator phase, where participants will have access to financial and practical support to commercialise their product.

Since 2016, the government has invested around £20m in the CivTech programme, helping 90 start-ups to scale up.

These include bioscience company SilviBio and Tape for Trees, which developed new seed germination technologies to help Forestry and Land Scotland increase the efficiency and survival rates of its tree seedlings.