This paper provides a discussion on where further investment and innovation is necessary and proposes how the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund can fill identified gaps and complement existing initiatives.
This paper was produced by the Centre for Ageing Better, with the support of Big Society Capital, based on conversations and involvement with various organisations, innovators and funders who are interested in ageing. The report was commissioned by UK Research and Innovation.
There has been promising growth and interest in activity around ageing innovation and investment in recent years. However, to date many of the ventures developed have been limited in scope, developed in isolation of one another and rarely reach significant scale.
There are clear gaps in the current investment ecosystem and a need for much greater collaboration between different programmes and funds that are established to promote healthy ageing. To shift people’s experience of ageing and later life we need to take a much more systematic approach to supporting the development and scaling of interventions across the wide range of areas for action to support healthy ageing.
This paper provides a discussion of the current ageing innovation and investment landscape and the current market opportunities and challenges. It offers reflections on where further investment and innovation is necessary and proposes how the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund can fill identified gaps and complement existing initiatives.
The Healthy Ageing Challenge Fund is a £98 million investment to stimulate economic growth in the UK by enabling business-led consortia to develop large-scale markets for products and services which maintain people’s independence as they age and delay transition into higher levels of care. The Healthy Ageing Challenge supports the government’s Ageing Society Grand Challenge mission for people to enjoy five more years of healthy, independent living by 2035 while narrowing the gap between the experience of the richest and the poorest.
