i4i: Product Development awards Call 16 Stage 1

Key Features

These awards support any stage of the translational research and development pathway, including the clinical development of laboratory-validated technologies or interventions.

Programme:     NIHR

Award:     no upper funding limit

Opens: 25th Apr 2018

Closes: 6th Jun 2018

! This scheme is now closed

All the i4i awards are based on a two stage application process – stage 2 is by invitation only.

What they fund

  • Research and development of medical devices, active implantable devices and in vitro diagnostic devices as defined by the relevant EU directives, across all areas of existing or emerging healthcare needs
  • Research and development of technologies or interventions specified by Challenge Awards themes
  • Product or technology development required to enable a technology for clinical use, which may include manufacturing, intellectual property protection, freedom to operate and market analysis or business case development
  • Research and development of techniques or technologies from a different industry sector, which could have a potential impact if applied in a healthcare setting
  • Feasibility studies if a technology from a sector other than health is being developed
  • Studies to provide data relating to safety and effectiveness of a device including first-in-man and pivotal studies
  • Health economic analyses and clinical utility studies looking at a device’s real-life implementation and use
  • CE marking and other regulatory requirements including any associated safety trials
  • Activities associated with the adoption of new technology
  • Training associated with the implementation of new technology

Projects must have already demonstrated ‘proof of principle’. Applicants are expected to have generated experimental data to support the case for further development and illustrate technical feasibility. Early stage research or discovery science is not fundable.

Work packages must not include animal studies or work on animal tissues. If animal studies are required as part of the project, NIHR expect applicants to seek parallel funding to cover such studies, details of which can be provided in the application form.

Award specifications:

  • A minimum of two organisations must be involved from either NHS Trust, HEI or SME.
  • Lead applicants must be based in England.
  • Projects may be up to three years in duration.
  • There is no upper funding limit, but costs must be fully justified.

As well as applications that fit the remit, PDA Call 16 also invites applications to the following Highlight Notices and Themed Calls:

Highlight Notices: 

  • ‘Complex Health and Care Needs in Older People’. Relevant research areas include frailty, transitions in care, service delivery and models of care, medicines management/polypharmacy, promoting healthy ageing/preventing ill health and patient-centred decision making.
  • ‘Brain Tumours’. This highlight notice indicates the continuing interest of NIHR in receiving research proposals in this area, and it encourages collaborative applications that demonstrate how they build on recent initiatives and investment in the area made by the NIHR, the MRC and other research funders

Themed Calls:

  • ‘Promotion of good mental health and the prevention or treatment of mental ill health’. Proposals are invited for clinical and applied health research that evaluate healthcare interventions, health services, social care or public health measures operating at either the individual, or the population level. Issues of particular interest include proposals that utilise new digital health technologies or investigate their effects.

Stage 2 begins 1st August 2018.