RAFT’s charitable objective is to get the maximum benefit to the maximum patients as quickly as possible.
For the majority of projects this means attracting commercial investment into projects at later stages.
A good example of this is the story behind the Smart Matrix® product , where RAFT was involved in creating a standalone commercial company (Smart Matrix Limited) which raised over £10 million to carry out clinical trials and advance the products development. RAFT retains both a shareholding in this company and the entitlement to a royalty stream which both will enable RAFT to carry on new research.
Other RAFT inventions that require substantial funding to get them to patients are planned to be commercialised and different models of how best to do this will be explored at the time.