In This Section..

Funding Opportunities

Updated on 2nd July 2012

For general information on funding sources, go here.

Calls for Proposals currently open include :

Big Lottery Funding
Dunhill Medical Trust
Technology Strategy Board R&D Grant
EPSRC Healthcare Technology Challenges for Engineering
Design for Wellbeing: Ageing and Mobility in the Built Environment
Dementia initiative
Health Innovation Challenge Fund
Predictive Modelling for Healthcare Technologies through Maths
Innovating in the Cloud
Evaluating new models of care for people with longterm conditions

1. Big Lottery Funding

The Big Lottery Fund’s Research programme is making up to £25 million available for high quality social and medical research projects across the UK.

Third sector organisations are able to apply for grants for up to five years from the programme, which will be administered by Momenta and supported by Third Sector First.

Grants of between £10,000 and £ 500,000 are available, with up to £1 million for exceptional projects. Applicants who need extra support will be able to apply for development grants of up to £10,000 to help develop their research proposal.

Momenta have developed an online application process which can be accessed at http://www.bigresearchprogramme.org.uk Registered applicants will be able to access advice and support on the conception, design and management of research from Third Sector First. For further information call 08450 711 068 or email researchprogramme@aeat.co.uk

More details from this [external] link.

2. Dunhill Medical Trust

Funding available for research into rehabilitation and disabilities affecting older people, with an emphasis on areas which find it hard to attract funding from other sources (eg incontinence).

More details here: http://www.dunhillmedical.org.uk/researchgrants.html

3. Technology Strategy Board R&D Grant

This new Technology Strategy Board scheme is offering funding to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in R&D projects in the strategically important areas of science, engineering and technology, from which successful new products, processes and services could emerge.

The Grant for Research and Development (Grant for R&D) scheme will support R&D projects which offer potentially significant rewards and could stimulate UK economic growth. In contrast to the Collaborative R&D programme, Grant for R&D funding is available to single companies.

Three types of grant are available:

Proof of market
Proof of concept
Development of prototype

All pre start-ups, start-ups, and small and medium-sized businesses from all sectors across the UK may apply for the Grant for R&D programme, which opened on 4th April 2011 and has a rolling programme of assessments through to mid 2012. To find out more, go here.

4. EPSRC Healthcare Technology Challenges for Engineering

EPSRC invites proposals for novel and creative engineering research to tackle challenges within healthcare. Assistive technology, Medical Imaging and Acute treatment technologies are highlighted as areas requiring additional research and development to maximise the benefits to the UK. There will be a strong focus on high quality adventurous engineering research that draws on the strengths of the UK research community. Applicants should consider how their proposal will realise stimulating research with potentially transformative impacts on healthcare.

EPSRC expects to fund individual research projects that are expected to vary in size and duration according to the demands of the proposed research, of up to £1M and up to three years in duration. A two-stage process (with expressions of interest and full proposal stages) will be used to allocate the funding.

Prospective applicants will need to complete an expression of interest form by 28th May 2012. Those invited to submit a full proposal will be notified by late June 2012. The deadline for submission of a full proposal will be early August 2012, with the expectation that funding decisions will be made by early December 2012. More information on the EPSRC website here.

5. Design for Wellbeing: Ageing and Mobility in the Built Environment

EPSRC is leading a call with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and invites proposals from interdisciplinary consortia for evidence led research into ageing and mobility in the built environment. This call is being run under the auspices of the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing (LLHW) cross-council ageing research programme which supports research addressing factors throughout life that influence health and wellbeing in older age.

This call is seeking to create a step change in interdisciplinary engineering, social science and design research for wellbeing in the built environment. There is up to £7M available (EPSRC up to £4M, ESRC up to £2M and AHRC up to £1M) to support a maximum of five large multi-disciplinary projects of up to three years duration.

Prospective applicants will need to complete an Expression of Interest form by 10th September 2012 and there is more information via this link.

6. Dementia initiative

The Prime Minister has announced plans to tackle what he is calling a 'national crisis' posed by dementia, including a doubling of research funding into dementia to £66 million per annum by 2015. As part of the funding being made available, the ESRC and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) will be working together to support an initiative with up to £13 million funding available for social science research on dementia. The areas to be addressed are:

Prevention, including public awareness and early presentation
Public health of behaviour change, including the role of social interventions in slowing cognitive decline
Delivery of interventions in hospitals care homes and carers, including the interface between professionals, lay people and patients

There is a meeting for potential applicants to be held in central London in mid June. The call opens on 9th July 2012 and the closing date for outline applications is 10th September 2012. More details via this link.

7. Health Innovation Challenge Fund

This is a parallel funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health to stimulate the creation of innovative healthcare products, technologies and interventions and to facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond.

Current calls include:

0512-2a: Early detection and diagnosis of chronic illness or long-term conditions
An approach to proactively combat the rise in LTCs is to develop innovative products, technologies and interventions that enable healthcare professionals to identify chronic illness or LTC earlier and treat patients more effectively. Applications are invited that:

provide health professionals with the tools to better understand the health status and risk of patients, particularly where multiple conditions currently exist or are likely to develop; various technologies could be applicable (e.g. diagnostics, biomarkers)
offer solutions that can be utilised within integrated care systems, which may involve multidisciplinary groups working across health and social care.

For the purposes of this call, example LTCs may include coronary heart disease, stroke and transient ischaemic attack, hypertension, diabetes, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, epilepsy, heart failure, arthritis, mental health issues, and a range of neurological conditions - particularly Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, and brain and spinal injuries.

0512-5a: Repurposing of medicines and medical devices
It is not always commercially attractive to repurpose devices or drugs even though important medical benefits could be gained. This HIC Fund theme is intended to support and facilitate projects aiming to repurpose products in the wider pursuit of enhanced, affordable healthcare and which can result in early adoption by the NHS and other healthcare systems. Applications are invited that:

will repurpose approved medicinal products or medical devices for use in new therapeutic indications or disease states, including (but not limited to) provision of paediatric versions of existing drugs, surgical instruments or devices
recombine or reuse pre-existing drugs and data for various diseases, including rare or orphan ones
are anticipated to encounter a low regulatory hurdle and rapid progression to clinical use and adoption.
undertake validation studies and early or small pilot scale efficacy trials.

This call will remain open and will continue to accept applications in each of these categories until 2nd September 2013. Details via this link.

8. Predictive Modelling for Healthcare Technologies through Maths

EPSRC sandpit event which will provide an opportunity to work collaboratively at the interface of mathematical sciences and healthcare technologies. The event will explore the challenges in this area and drive transformational research proposals aimed at improving predictive modelling in healthcare technologies. Expressions of interest in participation are now invited from those with relevant skills, and with enthusiasm for such transformative research.

EPSRC says it expects all projects arising from this event to have a significant mathematical component; developing genuinely new mathematics, which may, or could reasonably be expected to, contribute to improving predictive modelling in healthcare technologies, now or in the future.

This event will be ideally suited to those wanting to do 'new and different' rather than 'more of the same'. Importantly, it will provide ideal conditions for cross disciplinary breakthroughs.

This event is organised jointly by the EPSRC Mathematical Sciences capability theme and EPSRC Healthcare Technologies challenge theme, and up to £5 million is available for funding. Deadline for applications is 9th July 2012 and there are more details here.

9. Innovating in the Cloud

The government plans to award up to £4.5m of grant funding ifor new research and development that will address business and technology challenges impeding the adoption of cloud computing. Feasibility studies funded by the Technology Strategy Board last year identified three key issues that presented a challenge for many organisations to the adoption of cloud computing - interoperability, resilience of data and identity assurance. This second round of investment aims to stimulate innovation to address these issues.

The Innovating in the Cloud competition for collaborative R&D funding is inviting applications for projects that will demonstrate how new or improved value chains and networks can be created, and show where value can be increased by offering innovative information, content and services in the cloud.

All proposals must be collaborative and business-led. There are two strands to this competition. In the first, projects must be led by a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) and will generally attract up to 50% public funding. Up to £75,000 will be invested in each project, which must last between 6 and 12 months. In the second strand, consortia must include at least one SME and one medium-to-large partner. These projects will generally attract up to 50% public funding and must last between 6 and 24 months. For more details, go here.

10. Evaluating new models of care for people with longterm conditions

The NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) programme has announced a call inviting ambitious research studies assessing the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of new and innovative models of care or clinical pathways for people with longterm conditions. The aim is to generate high-impact research which will provide commissioners and providers with useful evidence when re-designing services across a whole care pathway.

The NIHR says substantial funding is available to support research which has the capacity to make a major difference to long term care in the NHS. It is seeking to evaluate innovative models of care which have potential for widespread application at scale. Examples of such studies could include a controlled before-after impact study of a new service for the frail elderly in one health and social care system; a contemporaneous evaluation of a major service redesign for people with musculo-skeletal conditions; a cluster trial of practices delivering new forms of case management for people with depression and a physical condition; or a simulation study comparing different models for delivering care for disabled children across regions. These examples are solely illustrative of the principles of innovation, generalisability and scaleability and do not indicate that these areas are particular funding priorities.

There is no defined budget cap for this call, but studies will need to demonstrate value for money and fully justify costs. Funding is directed to the evaluation and research effort, rather than service development. However, close partnerships will be needed between research teams and service initiatives. The NIHR has therefore extended the usual period for developing proposals to allow time for building these relationships. Researchers will have seven months to develop outline proposals, in collaboration with service partners, and the deadline for applications is 17th January 2013. Further information via this link.