Key Features
The SBRI (Small Business Research Initiative) Healthcare Programme is committed to supporting the NHS in delivering the objectives of the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP).
Programme: SBRI
Award: Share of up to £500,000
Opens: 31st Jul 2024
Closes: 18th Sep 2024
The SBRI Healthcare Programme is committed to supporting the NHS in delivering the objectives of the NHS Long Term Plan (LTP). Competition 26 Urgent & Emergency Care Phase 3 funding supports implementation studies that generate the evidence in real-world settings necessary to progress towards future uptake and provide potential adopting organisations with an understanding of the implementation pathway and assurance of benefit delivery.
In 2024/25, SBRI Healthcare Phase 3 seeks to address challenges in Urgent and Emergency Care and aims to identify solutions at an advanced stage of development which help tackling:
1. Health and Care outside of Hospitals: Accessing the Right Care and Reducing Demand
2. Reducing Length of Stay and Improving Discharge
3. Supporting Workforce
Applicants are asked to consider the impact of their innovation on the whole system and to be aware of the competitive environment, even considering working together with other companies and organisations to bring forward solutions that can make a real difference.
Solutions which address any challenges associated with health inequalities, such as demographic and geographic disparities, and show a strong commitment to contribute to the NHS carbon reduction ambitions are particularly welcomed.
Urgent and emergency services have been through the most testing time in NHS history with a perfect storm of pressures impacting the whole health and care system but causing the most visible problems at the front door. Despite their best efforts, problems discharging patients to the most appropriate care settings, alongside the demands of flu and COVID peaking together, has seen hospital occupancy reach record levels. This means patient ‘flow’ through hospitals has been slower. As a result, patients are having to spend longer in A&E and waiting longer for ambulances.
Given the relationship between access to general practice and dental services, A&E attendances, admissions, and discharge to appropriate community services, recovering UEC services in England will require a system-wide approach. NHS England’s Delivery Plan for Recovering Urgent and Emergency Care Services, published in January 2023, sets out the ambition to develop a system that provides more and better care in people’s homes, gets ambulances to people more quickly when they need them, sees people faster when they go to hospital and helps people safely leave hospital having received the care they need.
The paper sets out a number of ambitions, including:
• Patients being seen more quickly in emergency departments: with the ambition to improve to 76% of patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours by March 2024, with further improvement in 2024/25.
• Ambulances getting to patients quicker: with improved ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average over 2023/24, with further improvement in 2024/25 towards pre-pandemic levels.
Meeting this challenge will require sustained focus on five areas:
• Improving flow – Reducing demand through better care pathways in community, innovations in hospital at home/virtual wards and improved discharges to provide the capacity to allow flow of patients
• Growing the workforce – Optimising the composition of the workforce and supporting staff to work flexibly for patients.
• Improving discharge6 – Working jointly with all system partners to strengthen discharge processes, backed up by more investment in step-up, step-down and social care, and with a new metric based on when patients are ready for discharge, with the data published ahead of winter.
• Expanding and better joining up health and care outside hospital – Stepping up capacity in out-of-hospital care, including hospital at home/virtual wards so that people can be better supported at home for their physical and mental health needs, including to avoid unnecessary admissions to hospital.
• Making it easier to access the right care – Ensuring healthcare works more effectively for the public, so people can more easily access the care they need, when they need it.
Challenges
Under this Phase 3 Funding Competition, three challenges have been identified via consultation with clinicians and other stakeholders working in healthcare provision. Applicants are expected to respond to one of the following challenges.
Challenge 1 – Health and Care outside of Hospitals: Accessing the Right Care and Reducing Demand
Challenge 2 –Reducing Length of Stay and Improving Discharge
Challenge 3 – Supporting Workforce
For further information on each challenge, please see here
The competition is open to any innovation (e.g., medical device, in-vitro diagnostic, digital health solutions and AI solutions, behavioural interventions, and service improvements) that meets the entry criteria and the challenges described below.
Single organisations (contracts are executed with individual legal entities) based in the UK or EU from the private, public and third sectors, including companies (large corporates and small and medium enterprises), charities, universities, and NHS Foundation Trusts, given a strong commercial strategy is provided, are eligible to apply.
Organisations based outside the UK or EU with innovations in remit for this call can apply as subcontractors of a lead UK/EU based organisation or via a UK or EU subsidiary.
Collaborations are encouraged in the form of subcontracted services as appropriate.
All proposals should also be aware that the following will be excluded:
● Basic research and innovations in the creation phase.
● Systems and solutions (such as wellness or wellbeing digital applications) that will not easily integrate or communicate with NHS/community setting systems. Some evidence of interoperability and/or work to assess this will be required.
● Technologies that do not comply with GDPR policies.
● Technologies that may increase burden on the workforce.
● Technologies that will exacerbate health inequalities (including digital exclusion or data inequalities) and inequity of access to care e.g., digital technologies that are inaccessible to certain communities that experience digital poverty.
● Innovations that are not co-designed with patients and end users.
● Electric ambulances.
The aim of the funding is to generate real-world evidence to support rapid local or regional roll out of the innovation. Awarded proposals are expected to demonstrate some of the following exit points upon project completion:
• Implementation effectiveness demonstrated and a defined implementation guide produced where appropriate.
• Evidence of health and financial impact: health economics analysis (i.e., cost benefit analysis, budget impact model).
• Collation of evidence in response to NICE Early Value Assessment recommendations and related Evidence Generation Plan and/or towards full NICE guidance
• Innovation independently evaluated to demonstrate its impact in real-world settings.
• Environmental and sustainability assessment and impact.
• Equality and Health Inequalities impact assessment.
• Partnership developed for implementation in multiple sites.
• NHS Business case (e.g., procurement business cases to support transition into business-as-usual via standard commissioning routes, inclusion for national commissioning initiatives, inclusion on procurement frameworks, etc).
• Defined commissioning or procurement approach.
• Other relevant evidence to ensure local adoption following project completion, and plans for further spread and adoption (e.g., scaling-up plan and strategic plan towards adoption
and spread, marketing tools development).
• Company scaling plan (e.g., staff, money, supply, etc).
Please consult the Guidance for Applicants for more details.
This SBRI Healthcare competition is funded by the AAC in partnership with the Health Innovation Network to facilitate the collection of evidence in real-world settings and build on the value proposition of mature products for adoption and spread. The projects will be selected primarily on their potential value to the health service and social care system, and on the improved outcomes delivered for those in receipt of care.
The Phase 3 funding competition is intended to facilitate the implementation of developed innovations. Contracts will be for a maximum of 12 months and up to £500,000 (NET) per project.
The implementation will be 100% funded and suppliers for each project will be selected by an open competition process and retain the intellectual property rights (IPR) generated from the
project, with certain rights of use retained by the NHS.
Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.
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