Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £3.7 million for R&D projects that provide digital therapeutics for mental health solutions. This funding is from Innovate UK.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £3.7 million
Opens: 28th Oct 2024
Closes: 15th Jan 2025
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £3.7 million in innovation projects to develop digital therapeutic solutions for mental health.
The aim of this competition is to develop digital therapeutic extended reality (XR) solutions to provide mental healthcare services. These solutions will optimally be applied and trialled following an R&D cycle of between 12 to 18 months. Solutions must have the potential to be adopted at scale to form part of the UK’s formal mental healthcare ecosystem.
Your project must undertake industrial research and development in the application of extended reality (XR), to provide mental healthcare therapeutic solutions. Your proposal must include the design and features of your solution and how it will be applied.
Portfolio approach
Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, technological maturities and location. Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.
Your project must focus on the following:
The application of extended reality
A digital therapeutic for mental health through the application of Extended Reality (XR) which includes creative technologies, virtual reality, networked or augmented reality, mixed reality, haptics, holograms, immersive software and immersive audio.
Solutions for moderate and severe mental health conditions
Solutions for those living with moderate (where the condition makes daily life difficult) and severe (where conditions make daily life extremely difficult) mental health illness. Specifically, XR therapeutic solutions that positively improve the impairment, disability and distress experienced by those living with mental health difficulties at any point in their life course. Solutions are strongly encouraged, in particular, where the mental health difficulties have an impact on education, employment and daily life.
Solutions that can be applied at all clinical levels
Solutions for use at any point in the care pathway, at all clinical levels, which have the ambition to seek regulatory approval, adoption and scale, as and where appropriate.
Your project must:
Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Lead organisation
To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:
More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.
Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
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. Their costs will count towards the total eligible 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 cannot 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. Innovate UK 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
A business can only lead on one application in this competition but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.
If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
An academic institution, research and technology organisation, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.
Sanctions
This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions. For example, through any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any entity as lead, partner or subcontractor related to these countries, administrations and terrorist groups.
Use of animals in research and innovation
Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.
Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations, as well as compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.
You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:
Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:
Up to £3.7 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
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.
The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisations receiving the grant.
For industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:
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 can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:
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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