The Med-Tech industry is striving to create new technologies that deliver innovative, flexible and efficient diagnostic solutions for healthcare practitioners. It’s one of the largest, growing industries in the UK right now.
Claiming R&D Tax Relief for the development of these technologies can help re-coup a significant proportion of these costs. A recent study found that one in five (21%) innovation active engineering firms (including Med-Tech companies) are not taking advantage of the government’s R&D Tax Credit scheme, potentially missing out on over £10 billion of R&D funding each year.
Developing medical technologies can be a lengthy journey and the time it takes to get a product to market is notably longer than in other industries. This can be due to the large amount of legislation and regulations a med-tech product must adhere to, the clinical trials to prove the technology works, the process of receiving CE marking and getting buy-in from healthcare providers such as the NHS.
Claiming R&D Tax Credits during the development of your new technology allows you to recoup up to 33% of your eligible research and development expenditure as either Corporation Tax relief or a cash repayment.
The financial benefit of your claim can help fund the next stages of your development and maybe even accelerate the process of getting your product to market!
Eligible Activities
The first step to making your R&D Tax Credit claim for Med-Tech Innovation is to identify which activities are eligible for the HMRC schemes. Here are a few examples:
- Prototype development costs
- Clinical Trials up to Phase III
- Testing to satisfy regulatory requirements
- Software development
- Hardware development and integration of that with software.
- Improving the efficiency of existing processes
- Reducing surgical and recovery time
- Increasing medical analysis capability
The average R&D Tax Credits claim for Med-Tech businesses is £68,000 per annum and the rapid developments within the industry means that claim values can range from thousands to millions.
This article was written by Medilink Patron, TBAT Innovation.