Innovative Engineering for Health

Purpose

The call for proposals to the Innovative Engineering for Health scheme has now closed. There will be no future calls under this scheme.

The Wellcome Trust and the EPSRC are looking to support a limited number of innovative, multidisciplinary projects designed to address a defined need in healthcare for which current solutions are inadequate or lacking. Priority will be given to projects with the potential to impact on particularly intractable problems in medicine or public health using exciting engineering concepts. Projects must address the full translation pathway from high-quality basic research through to adoption into practice, together with full analysis of routes to market.

Awards of up to £10 million over seven years will be considered, reflecting the scale of ambition that the initiative seeks to support.

Examples of the kind of challenging themes that the funding partners wish to address through novel thinking from the biomedical engineering community include:

• engineering approaches to mental health, with particular emphasis on psychiatric conditions and mood disorders
• solutions to facilitate neonatal and paediatric care that accommodate the challenges posed by growth and development
• technologies with the potential to mitigate rare diseases (as defined by the FDA Office of Orphan Product Development or EU Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products), with special reference to solutions that can rectify an abnormality common to multiple disorders.

These broad themes are indicative only and proposals that address other areas of unmet need that would benefit from the application of novel approaches in engineering will also be welcomed.

Bids should be directed towards a major problem in healthcare or public health, with priority given to difficult areas for which solutions are not obvious given the current state of technology. Out of scope will be proposals designed to further the development of an existing technology in a particular therapeutic area, or that are focused on technology development in its own right, rather than in the context of solving a defined healthcare objective.

What's included

The £30 million initiative is expected to fund three or four projects of up to £10 million pounds each.

Awards can be for a period of up to seven years.

The outcomes of the proposals should be translational and will be expected to include clear and credible strategies for adoption of the research into clinical or public health practice. Proposals will need to include a full analysis of the technology's route to market.

The initiative will take a broad view of what is covered within the definition of biomedical engineering, but proposals should contain clear elements of the design and analytical principles that are fundamental to engineering.

As long as it is adequately justified, modest equipment purchase and maintenance costs may be included in the application.

Any building costs associated with integrating separate research groups involved in the project should be met by the host institution(s).

Although proposals containing a significant training element are encouraged, requests for individual PhD studentships or four-year PhD programmes will not be considered.

Overheads to overseas institutions will not be funded.

The Wellcome Trust and EPSRC are committed to engaging with society about the research they support. Science and technology that is intended to impact on society should not be developed behind closed doors. To encourage this, applicants will be required to formulate public engagement plans as an integral element of their proposals at full application stage and to budget for them appropriately (actual costs).

Eligibility

Proposals are welcome from academic and commercial organisations based in the UK and overseas. However, given the EPSRC's responsibilities for funding engineering research in the UK, linkages between UK academic institutions and overseas groups will be especially welcomed.

Institutions

Eligible institutions are not-for-profit research institutions, including those funded by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, in the UK, that are able to sign up to Wellcome Trust Grant Conditions. Overseas institutions should confirm their eligibility with Technology Transfer.

Companies

Commercial companies are eligible to apply either as principal applicants or as collaborators. The Wellcome Trust is able to use charitable monies to fund commercial companies to meet its charitable objectives through programme-related investment (PRI). For further details, please see our policy on PRI [Word 23KB]. Companies will normally be expected to sign up to specific terms relating to the scheme.

All applications will require clear arrangements for leadership and management of the project, whether this involves a single institution or a consortium.

The principal investigator may be from any of the participating organisations.

Application process

Applications to the Innovative Engineering for Health scheme are by invitation only. Prospective applicants are invited to submit a one-page Word document that summarises their concept/proposal by addressing the following questions:

1. What specific healthcare/public health problem are you addressing?

2. What is the innovative engineering / technological approach?

3. What proof-of-concept data is currently available to validate your approach?

4. Who will be the key partners involved in the project?

Summaries should be emailed to the Wellcome Trust at techtransfer@wellcome.ac.uk for feedback.A preliminary application form will then be supplied if appropriate. Unscreened applications submitted directly to the Wellcome Trust or EPSRC will not be accepted.

Preliminary applications will be reviewed and shortlisted by an expert committee that will include representatives from both the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC.

Details on the full application process will be provided in due course.

Full applications will be subject to external peer review, and applicants will be required to present their proposal to a Joint Wellcome Trust/EPSRC Funding Committee. (As this is a jointly managed initiative, the Wellcome Trust and EPSRC will exchange information contained in applications and peer-review reports.)

Deadlines

The call for proposals to the Innovative Engineering for Health scheme has now closed. There will be no future calls under this scheme.

Deadline for submission of concepts: 10 December 2012

Deadline for submission of invited preliminary applications: 7 January 2013

Shortlisting of proposals: February 2013

Funding decisions: July 2013

Contacts

Technology Transfer
Wellcome Trust
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK

T +44 (0)20 7611 8202
E techtransfer@wellcome.ac.uk

Forms and guidance

Key funding terms [Word 34KB]