Advancing precision medicine

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £20 million, over two rounds of this competition, in industry-led collaborative R&D innovation projects. The competition will fund projects aiming to develop digital and data-enabled tools as well as multi-modal approaches for more accurate diagnosis and treatment stratification.

The aim of this competition is to award innovation projects that focus on novel digital and data-enabled tools to:

• more accurately diagnose conditions and stratify patients to the most appropriate treatments
• increase the application of integrated and multi-modal approaches to determine risk and diagnosis and to predict prognostic outcomes

Your proposal must demonstrate how it addresses an unmet clinical need or responds to NHS demand signalling.

This is round 1 of a 2 round competition:

• Round 1: a focus on musculoskeletal and cardiovascular disease, and other chronic conditions excluding oncology (this round)
• Round 2: a focus on oncology, musculoskeletal and cardiovascular disease, and other chronic conditions

Round 2 is anticipated to open May 2023.

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total costs between £500,000 and £1 million
• start by 1 Aug 2023
• end by 31 July 2025
• last between 18 months and 24 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, or a UK registered research and technology organisation (RTO)
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations

At least one grant-claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) must lead or be a collaborator. If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with at least 2 businesses (one SME, and one business of any size). Academic institutions cannot lead.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• charity
• not for profit
• public sector organisation
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Public sector organisations include, NHS or National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) organisations. For example, an Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) or Medtech and In vitro diagnostics Co-operative (MIC) or equivalent in the devolved administrations.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to award innovation projects that focus on novel digital and data-enabled tools to:

• more accurately diagnose conditions and stratify patients to the most appropriate treatments
• increase the application of integrated and multi-modal approaches to determine risk and diagnosis and to predict prognostic outcomes.

Your project must demonstrate how it addresses an unmet clinical need or responds to NHS demand signalling.

Your proposal can include:

• experimental evaluation, within a clinical environment
• prototyping
• product development planning
• intellectual property protection
• a demonstration of clinical utility and effectiveness
• regulatory planning

We encourage proposals for common chronic condition areas, in this round particularly:

• cardiovascular disease
• musculoskeletal conditions
• respiratory disease

Specific themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• integrating clinical data sets or multi-omic data sources
• development of artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms and clinical decision-making tools to improve early detection, risk prediction, diagnosis, patient stratification, targeted treatments or prognostic outcomes
• identification of digital markers, potential targets or data-derived phenotypes to stratify patient to more effective therapies

The list is not intended to be exhaustive.

We are not funding projects that are:

• digital technologies to improve healthcare system delivery
• approaches that do not specifically and directly aim to improve diagnostic precision or stratified treatment of a specified chronic health condition
• development of broad-based diagnostics and therapeutics

Briefing and support

A briefing webinar will be held at 2pm on Tuesday 24th January: click here to register for a place.

If you want help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Health team.