Frequently Asked Questions

It starts with an idea, a problem, an opportunity, or a barrier to an obvious need. It is something new, creative, and original – It is not a process improvement or a re-engineering activity.

The innovation aims to create outcomes of new opportunities for growth and development.

An unmet need is an area that has a significant opportunity for improvement in your current workplace or for which an identified solution is still not available.

The ideas or problems do not need to be directly related to health clinical care. Unmet needs could be in areas like environmental sustainability, safety, efficiency, and technology integration and repurposing within the healthcare context. There are no barriers to the type of idea or problem that people submit. Still, any related solution must impact public health, patient care or provide clinical, environmental or social impact/benefit.

The IAP is open to all hospital staff.

IAP calls are health care organisation specific. To understand if your healthcare organisations is currently participating please get in touch with us.

The program will provide set-up and management support for successful project teams, including centralised research support services offered by the Research Innovation and Commercialisation team, e.g. Contracts management, business development and IP support, ethics and integrity compliance services.

Freeing up your valuable time to innovate and learn!

The IAP aims to develop solutions to help address challenges that staff are confronted with as part of their role in healthcare.

Initially, a panel of experts will evaluate the unmet needs to determine the significance of the problem and whether there is a clear demand for a solution in light of options currently available.

At the end of the program, the IAP project teams will take part in a pitch event, when their new projects will be assessed against a set of criteria including feasibility of development, intellectual property considerations, commercial potential. Successful teams will receive funding to further develop their projects.

This program has been intentionally designing to be swift and efficient.

A pitching event will be held three months after the project team formation and the successful teams will be notified within 24 hours.

The Business Development teams and key members of the relevant academic divisions will review the selected unmet needs and approach UoM researchers with requisite expertise to help develop a solution. The UoM research teams will meet with the clinician and discuss the feasibility of solutions being suggest (in many cases, clinicians will already have an idea of a possible solution) and, if there is a consensus, then they will form a project team and continue through the IAP pathway.

That is okay! You will be provided with some feedback on why your solution did not receive funding after the pitch event.  We encourage you to incorporate the above advice and if appropriate re-submit for the next round of the IAP when it next opens for submissions. The University has many other means of supporting research with a clinical pull. Here is a link to the Proof-of-Concept Fund from RIC, and then you can re-apply next year.

Once you have been connected and formed a project team, you will also engage with Central support from two of the University’s Research Innovation and Commercialisation teams. Together, you will conceptualise your new project over a three month period and work on a pitch presentation which will include all of the information required to apply for seed funding. Funds will be awarded to successful team/s after the pitch event.

You can apply for between $10 000 -$100 000. A final decision on the amount of seed funding awarded is based on the time to impact of your solution. ‘Time to impact’ is how long it would take to conduct the next experiment, develop a prototype, or implement the idea to solve the unmet need.

Suppose you are ready to move your product out into the world. In that case, commercialisation and IP expert support is available to help you progress.

If you need to source further funds to continue your research project. In that case, support is available to help you discover funding opportunities.