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.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

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Eligibility

Your project

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

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must:

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

You must be or involve at least one grant-claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

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.

Project team

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.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

Any one business or research and technology organisation (RTO) can lead on one application and can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications.

If an RTO is not leading an application, they can be a collaborator in any number of applications.

Other organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

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