Advancing Innovation in Drug and Alcohol Addiction Healthcare (CR&D Grant)

This Innovate UK competition, delivered for the OLS Addiction Healthcare Goals programme, provides grant funding to accelerate advanced innovations that can materially improve outcomes in drug and alcohol addiction healthcare.

Unlike earlier-stage R&D calls, this strand is aimed at interventions that are already on a credible pathway to deployment. By project end, Innovate UK expects innovations to be at TRL 8 or preferably TRL 9, with regulatory approvals and certification secured, or clearly underway, and a full market readiness analysis supported by plans for manufacturing and UK roll-out.

What Innovate UK wants to fund

Projects must address illicit drug or alcohol use and focus on improving treatment outcomes, enhancing recovery, and reducing harm and deaths. Your intervention must be one of the following:

• Pharmaceutical
• MedTech
• Digital health

Substances in scope reflect those seen in typical services, including opioids, stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine, cannabis, GHB, ketamine, benzodiazepines and gabapentinoids. Projects primarily targeting tobacco or nicotine, gambling, or behavioural addictions are out of scope.

Who can lead and how collaborations work

This is a collaborative grant competition. The lead organisation must be a UK registered business of any size. Academic institutions and RTOs cannot lead, and non-profit organisations without a commercial focus are not eligible to lead.

You can work with a mixed consortium, including UK registered businesses, NHS service providers, local authorities, academic institutions, charities, not-for-profits and RTOs.

Funding, project size and key dates

Funding is delivered as a grant, with total eligible costs expected to be:

• £250,000 to £7 million for MedTech and digital solutions
• £250,000 to £10 million for pharmaceutical interventions
  (Justifiable costs outside these ranges may be considered.)