Enterprise Ireland funding for medtech startups: the HPSU feasibility grant

If you are building medical or health software in Ireland with real ambition to sell beyond it, Enterprise Ireland is your funder. It is the national agency for scaling exporters, and a technically innovative, globally minded medtech company is close to its ideal applicant. That is worth saying plainly, because a lot of founders assume state funding is a bureaucratic long shot. It is not. They are actively looking for you.

Let us break down the main early support, what it funds, and how to arrive with an application that stands out.

First, what "High Potential Start-Up" means

Most of Enterprise Ireland's startup supports are unlocked by High Potential Start-Up (HPSU) status. An HPSU is broadly a company that is export-oriented, built on an innovative product or service, capable of real scale, and able to create jobs. If you are building Software as a Medical Device or a health platform aimed at international markets, you very likely qualify in spirit, which is the point of understanding the criteria early.

If you are earlier and more local than that, you typically start with your Local Enterprise Office and graduate to Enterprise Ireland as your ambition and traction grow. The two are designed to hand off to each other.

The HPSU Feasibility Study Grant

This is the early flagship. The HPSU Feasibility Study Grant covers up to 70 percent of eligible costs to a maximum of €30,000. It is designed for exactly the stage you are probably at: validating whether the opportunity is real before you pour resources into it.

It typically funds work like export market research, technical research and prototyping, and developing your business plan. In other words, the grant pays you to answer the hard questions that make or break the company, while the risk is still cheap to discover.

Always check the official page for the current percentages, caps, and eligible cost categories before you build a budget around it. Grant detail shifts, and you want your numbers to match theirs.

The other supports worth knowing

Two more belong on your radar early:

• Innovation Vouchers are worth €10,000 (a standard voucher; co-funded up to €20,000) for any Irish SME to buy in expertise from a registered knowledge provider. They are simple and accessible, and we cover how to use one well in a dedicated post on Innovation Vouchers.
• Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) funding comes later and bigger, once you are doing substantial technical development. The Innovative HPSU Fund is equity, not a grant: Enterprise Ireland co-invests alongside private investors when you reach that stage.

For the full landscape across Ireland and the EU, our map of medtech and health software grants lays them out side by side.

What actually makes an application strong

Here is the part most founders underuse. A feasibility grant is competitive, and what wins is evidence that you have de-risked the obvious unknowns. For medical software, one of the biggest unknowns is your regulatory path.

An assessor reading two applications, one that hand-waves "we will sort out compliance later" and one that says "we are Class IIa under EU MDR Rule 11, here is the standard we build to and the quality system it requires," will trust the second team more. Not because the first is doomed, but because the second has clearly looked down the road and is not going to be blindsided by it. Funders back teams who understand what they are walking into.

That clarity is genuinely within reach this early, and it costs you nothing to establish. Knowing your classification turns "regulation is a scary unknown" into a concrete line in your plan.

Where QualiHQ comes in

This is the quiet advantage. The same compliance groundwork that strengthens your grant application is the groundwork you will need anyway, so doing it now is not extra work, it is earlier work.

QualiHQ exists so that this foundation does not drain the grant you just won. You bring your product and your test evidence; QualiHQ reads your documents and your test runs and generates the quality management system, the requirements, and the risk file the standards expect, at a fraction of what it costs to pay a consultant to build it from a blank page. The money you raise goes further, and you finish your feasibility stage with the compliance groundwork laid rather than still ahead of you.

You do not have to choose between spending the grant on product and spending it on compliance. Get your regulatory position clear, fold it into your application, and let the funding cover real progress on both.

Official sources, always check these for current detail: Enterprise Ireland HPSU Feasibility Study Grant and Enterprise Ireland startup supports.

Lining up an Enterprise Ireland application? Find your likely class in two minutes, free, and put your regulatory path in your plan before you submit. Then see how QualiHQ builds the rest.