Three pilot projects will receive a total of £1 million to drive forward new approaches to innovation.

Toshiba Medical Visualisations Systems, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the NHS Innovation Partnership Board, will receive £400,000 to develop a health and wellbeing pilot that will focus on the rapid prototyping and adoption of solutions to inflammatory bowel disease.

CivTech, a digital accelerator which aims to harness innovation in Scotland’s small business and start up technology sector to create new and/or more efficient public services, will receive £200,000.

£400,000 will be used to support work with Codebase on the development of a digital pilot in Edinburgh that will focus on scaling up digital entrepreneurs.

Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy announced the funding alongside a new Innovation Action Plan for Scotland, aimed at boosting Scotland’s innovation performance to match the levels of the best performing countries in the OECD.

Early priorities will be to:

• Directly encourage more business innovation
• Use public sector needs and spend to catalyse innovation
• Support innovation across different sector
• Make best use of university research knowledge and talent to drive growth and equip Scotland’s people with the tools and skills needed to innovate

Announcing the funding, Minister Business, Innovation and Energy Paul Wheelhouse said:

“We want to support business innovation and to help companies thrive. The £1 million I am announcing today will make a real difference, such as the use of the public sector to catalyse innovation in projects such as CivTech, the world’s first cross public sector technology accelerator.”