Grants for medtech and health software startups in Ireland and the EU

If you are building a medical or health software product in Ireland, there is more non-dilutive funding available to you than most founders realise, and a lot of it is aimed squarely at your earliest, riskiest stage. This is a practical map of the main grants, what each one is for, and roughly what it is worth. Treat it as a starting point: amounts and rules change, so always confirm the detail on the official page before you plan around it.

A quick note on why this matters at this stage. Grant money is most useful before you have revenue, when you are validating the product and starting to think about the regulatory path. That is also the moment the compliance work begins, which we will come back to at the end.

Local Enterprise Office (LEO): the early micro stage

Your Local Enterprise Office is the first stop for very early or micro businesses (broadly, up to ten employees). The grants most relevant to a software founder:

• Feasibility / Innovation Grant -- for researching whether your idea stands up: market research, prototyping, consultancy. Worth 50% of costs (60% in the Border, Midlands and West regions), up to a maximum of €15,000.
• Priming Grant -- start-up support in your first 18 months, worth up to 50% of investment to a maximum of €80,000 (higher in exceptional cases).
• Business Expansion Grant -- the equivalent once you are past that first 18 months.
• Agile Innovation Fund -- for research and development projects under €300,000, useful if you are doing genuine technical innovation.

Internationally traded software services are eligible; pure retail and local services are not. The Feasibility Grant in particular is an easy, sensible first ask.

Enterprise Ireland: high-potential startups

If you are aiming to be a High Potential Start-Up (HPSU) -- export-focused, scalable, which describes most ambitious medtech and SaMD companies -- you graduate from the LEO to Enterprise Ireland, and the supports get bigger:

• HPSU Feasibility Study Grant -- up to 70% of eligible costs to a maximum of €30,000, covering export market research, technical research, prototyping, and your business plan.
• Innovation Vouchers -- €5,000 for any Irish SME to buy in innovation expertise from a registered knowledge provider.
• Innovative HPSU Fund -- equity investment (not a grant) once you reach that stage, where Enterprise Ireland co-invests alongside private investors.

HPSU status is the key that unlocks most of these, so it is worth understanding the criteria early.

EU funding: Horizon Europe and the EIC

Beyond Ireland, the EU runs the largest research and innovation programme in the world, Horizon Europe, and the part most relevant to startups is the European Innovation Council (EIC):

• The EIC Accelerator backs deep-tech startups and SMEs with up to €2.5 million in grant funding, plus equity investment typically between €0.5 million and €10 million through blended finance. It is competitive and a serious application, but it is built for exactly the kind of high-risk, high-impact innovation a lot of medical software is.
• Wider Horizon Europe calls and collaborative projects are also worth scanning, especially if you can join a consortium.

This is a different weight class from the Irish feasibility grants, and a different timeline, but for the right product it is transformative and non-dilutive on the grant portion.

Putting grant money to work early

Here is the connection back to the start. The stage where you win a feasibility grant is the same stage where your regulatory path comes into focus: is this a medical device, what class, what quality system will you need. Founders often spend the grant proving the product and then hit the compliance work cold, with the money gone.

A smarter use of early funding is to get your compliance foundation moving at the same time. The documentation a medical software product needs -- a quality management system, a risk file, requirements and traceability -- is exactly the kind of work that used to mean paying a consultant by the hour. It does not have to.

Where QualiHQ comes in

QualiHQ exists so that the compliance foundation is not the thing that drains your grant or your runway. You bring your product and your test evidence; QualiHQ reads your documents and your test runs and generates the QMS, the requirements, and the risk file that the standards expect, at a fraction of the cost of a consultant building it from scratch. So the money you raise goes further, and you come out of your feasibility stage with the compliance groundwork already laid, not still ahead of you.

If you are at the grant-hunting stage, you are at exactly the point where getting this right early pays off most.

Official sources, always check these for current detail: Local Enterprise Office grants, Enterprise Ireland HPSU Feasibility Study Grant, and EU funding opportunities.

Working out your regulatory path while you line up funding? Find your likely class in two minutes, free, and see what your compliance foundation actually needs.