Digital Health Hub Pilot Scheme Open for Applications
Digital Health Hub Pilot Scheme Open for Applications
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is providing funding to establish digital health hubs. Selected hubs should promote knowledge and skills sharing across healthcare, academia and business, and drive innovation in digital health, creating a space for new research ideas and digital technologies to be developed.
The EPSRC has been working with Innovate UK to identify digital health skills requirements for academics and business. This is a pilot opportunity for proposals to create a digital health hub to address these requirements.
The hub will be focused on:
- Allowing co-creation of solutions with users across healthcare, such as patients, carers and clinicians.
- Enabling the accelerated translation of digital technologies into the healthcare space and rapid commercialisation of emerging digital technologies.
- Building new partnerships between industry, healthcare, social care, users of digital technologies and academia.
- Increasing the sharing of knowledge between industry, healthcare and academia.
- Providing a mechanism for fostering leadership in digital health and care.
Hubs should focus on pre-competitive research. Research at the hub should be mainly novel research in information and communications technology (ICT), mathematical sciences and engineering to develop innovative digital technologies for health.
Projects must be a collaboration between academia, the healthcare sector and business. Applicants must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding. This includes: UK higher education institutions; research council institutes; UKRI-approved independent research organisations; eligible public sector research establishments; and NHS bodies with research capacity. Full details of institutional eligibility criteria are available here.
Individual applicants can only submit one proposal as principal investigator. Individuals resident in the UK may apply if they meet at least one of the following conditions:
- Are employed at the submitting research organisation at a level equivalent to lecturer or above.
- Hold a fixed-term contract that extends beyond the duration of the proposed project, and the host research organisation is prepared to provide all the support normal for a permanent employee.
- Hold an EPSRC, Royal Society or Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship aimed at later career stages.
- Hold fellowships under other schemes (applicants should contact EPSRC to check eligibility, which is considered on a case-by-case basis).
A total of £8 million is available to support multiple projects. Proposals for hubs may be small or large scale depending on the need and costs involved. A single hub’s full economic cost can be up to £4 million. EPSRC will provide funding at 80% full Economic Cost (fEC).
Funding is available to support hubs for up to three years in this first phase. There will be an evaluation stage halfway through the programme to review options for progressing successful hubs to a second phase.
Expression of Interest forms should be submitted by the 19 May 2022 (16:00) deadline.
Full proposals should be submitted by the 11 August 2022 (16:00) deadline.