Advancing precision medicine

Key Features

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £20 million over two rounds of this competition. The competition will fund projects focusing on developing digital and data-enabled tools as well as multi-modal approaches.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £20 million

Opens: 16th Jan 2023

Closes: 8th Mar 2023

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

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.

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

Innovate UK encourage proposals for common chronic condition areas 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.

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

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.

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.

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 are allowed in this competition.

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.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK 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

Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:

  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Up to £20 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects over the two rounds of this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Up to £10 million has been allocated to this round of the competition.

The total funding available for the competition can change. The funder has the right to:

  • adjust the provisional funding allocations between the rounds
  • apply a portfolio approach

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
  • 100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.