Despite clinical evidence for its use, the cost and risk of implementing a new device into clinical pathways can make it difficult to get the product adopted into clinical practice. The NIHR has allocated £15 million over the next three years to the i4i Challenge Awards to help overcome these issues by identifying and supporting the application of emerging platform technologies which hold the potential to have a disruptive impact on clinical pathways.

The i4i Challenge Awards will hold one competition per year that will address a particular ‘challenge’ that is a priority for the NHS.

The programme will seek to identify those medical technologies with the greatest potential clinical benefit, along with how they might be integrated into clinical decision and treatment pathways and how they might be implemented on a large scale.

A typical Challenge Award project will look at technologies that have, in the first instance, been developed to aid the identification, diagnosis, and monitoring of a single disease.

The first challenge that the i4i Challenge Awards will address is cardiovascular disease – the leading cause of death in England and worldwide.

Cardiovascular disease encompasses a number of conditions including coronary heart disease, stroke and peripheral arterial disease. The high morbidity and mortality rate for patients with cardiovascular disease continues to be a significant burden on resources for the NHS, with the management of such long-term conditions remaining a high priority within both primary and secondary care.

The i4i Challenge Awards are inviting applications looking to implement point-of-care cardiac diagnostic and monitoring devices based on platform technologies for routine use. The programme is looking for disruptive technologies which have the potential to offer both time and cost savings alongside improved diagnosis and monitoring of cardiovascular disease.

Proposals must be based around a working prototype which has the potential for use in wider clinical settings, such as in other clinical specialities or within the community.

Diseases such as diabetes and chronic kidney disease are associated with cardiovascular disease. Applications to study the implementation of any medical device prototypes that examine the condition of the heart or blood vessels in patients with associated diseases will be considered for this competition.

Funding awarded will be used to demonstrate the usefulness of the technology in the clinic and its broader applicability.

There is no funding limit for projects - funding amounts are determined by the nature and scale of the research activity. i4i Challenge Award funding will cover up to 100% of eligible project costs.

Projects will be funded for up to three years.

Project teams will be led by an (academic) clinician based in an NHS Trust, in cooperation with commercial and Higher Education Institution (HEI) partners as appropriate.

Lead applicants must be based in England only.