Digital health technology catalyst round 2

The aim of this competition is to address major healthcare challenges and grow the UK digital healthcare industry through the innovative use of digital technologies.

You can develop solutions for either clinical or non-clinical settings.

Projects must be innovative, collaborative and clearly demonstrate how they will address the needs of the health and care system. Collaboration with healthcare providers if beneficial to the project is recommended.

Areas of importance (a guide to the type of projects the competition is seeking to fund)

1. Improving health, and closing the health and wellbeing gap with:

• cancer diagnosis and treatment
• mental health early stage intervention and treatment
• diabetes risk and incidence reduction

2. Transforming care, and closing the care and quality gap with:

• urgent and emergency care provision
• management of primary care workload
• enabling patient choice in elective care

3. Controlling costs and enabling change, and closing the finance and efficiency gap through the use of technology to maintain or improve levels of care with reduced spending.

Specific themes

The competition is looking to fund a portfolio of projects, across a variety of technologies, markets and healthcare needs.

Specific technologies include, but are not limited to:

• immersive: virtual and augmented reality
• intelligent: artificial intelligence and machine learning
• connected: use of sensors, internet of things (IoT), networks
• data driven: informatics, data analytics and process

The types of digital health projects the competition will fund include, but are not limited to:

• clinical decision-making support
• technologies that improve access to healthcare or help treatment compliance or provide patient led management
• digital technologies and products which help overcome privacy challenges of managing, sharing and exploiting data
• projects addressing the patient-led experience from prevention through diagnosis, treatment, recovery and long-term care
• applications of technology to health challenges where digital solutions offer and can demonstrate significant step-changes in quality, speed, cost, outcomes and learning

Eligibility 

To be eligible for funding your consortium must:

• be led by a UK based SME
• include at least one other business (of any size), academic organisation, charity, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from the UK

Project size

Total project costs should be between £300k and £1m.

Project types 

The competition will fund both industrial research and experimental development projects and you should make sure that you apply for the relevant type.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to 70% if you are an SME.

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 an SME.