The Duet Story
Twenty-five years of watching good questions go unfunded
Duet was founded by Julie and Mike Matthews to support health research, communication and education that commercial sponsorship and government grants pass by.
Julie and Mike Matthews founded Duet to enable them to put to charitable use the knowledge and experience gained from twenty-five years running their international drug development support company.
It also taught them which questions get answered. Funding follows a return, whether that return is commercial or academic. A brand new medicine for a common condition attracts attention and broad investment. A better way of managing an existing medicine's side effects does not. A test for a condition affecting only a few thousand people rarely clears this commercial hurdle, however much difference it would make to those few thousand people.
Using the knowledge and experience gained from the previous twenty-five years, it was time to move on. Duet is the result: a small UK charity that funds under-served work, and backs it with the experience, expertise and network of scientific and medical contacts built from solid experience.
What "under-served" means to us
We use the phrase carefully. A project is under-served when it would help people, when it can realistically be done, but is unlikely to be funded elsewhere. Usually that is because it is too small or too unprofitable to interest anyone else.
What we are not trying to be
We are not trying to replace research councils or large medical charities, and we are not trying to grow into one. We are trying to be useful: quick to decide, honest when the answer is no, and genuinely helpful when the answer is yes.
The gap, in plain terms
Most UK health research is paid for by research councils, often gathering data from the NHS, large medical charities or companies. Each has more good applications than money, and each has priorities that leave predictable gaps.
Small pilot studies. Work on making existing treatments safer. Conditions affecting small numbers of people. Explaining any of it to the public. Those are the gaps we work in.
Most medical research in the UK gets funded because it is either commercially attractive enough to be sponsored by a big company, or prestigious or interesting enough to get funding from elsewhere. Subjects which are neither potentially profitable nor of particular interest may therefore struggle to find funding. This funding gap is where Duet Health Foundation is focusing its attention.
See what we fundSmall charity, practical help
Duet is funded by our Founders and by people who believe useful research should not stall for want of a modest amount of money. Every gift goes into projects.