To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, an academic institution or an NHS organisation.

The consortium must contain at least one UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME) claiming grant funding on this application. No single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total project costs .

The consortium must also include a practising clinician, or clinical academic, or involve a clinical delivery team as a minimum.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• business of any size
• academic institution
• public sector organisation
• charity
• not for profit
• research and technology organisation (RTO)

Note: Public sector organisations include NHS or National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) organisations. For example, a Health Innovation Network (HIN) or HealthTech Research Centres or equivalent in the devolved administrations.

An eligible organisation can only lead on one application. Any further applications by the same organisation as lead will be made ineligible.

An eligible organisation that is leading an application can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. Organisations that are not leading an application can collaborate in any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have total project costs of between £1.5 million and £4 million
• last between 24 and 36 months
• start by 1 April 2027
• end by 31 March 2030

No single organisation can claim more than 70% of the total project costs .

Any organisation receiving funding must carry out its project work in the UK, intend to exploit the results in the UK, and spend most of the funding within the UK.

The aim of this competition is to accelerate the development of diagnostic innovations that enable the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer, particularly less common cancers.

Your project must focus on developing, validating or evaluating diagnostic technologies or approaches that demonstrate clear potential for clinical and health economic impact. Projects can generate robust evidence to support regulatory approval and future NHS adoption.

Your project can include clinical validation and evaluation studies, early phase clinical trials, safety and efficacy testing, technology demonstration in relevant and operational environments, regulatory planning and product development activities.

Projects focusing on less common cancers are particularly encouraged for this competition, which includes any cancer that is not breast, prostate, lung or bowel cancer. Less common cancers can include rare forms of these four cancer types.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

Next generation diagnostic technologies and devices: to drive earlier diagnosis of cancer, including less common cancers

Novel technologies and devices which can improve patient access to diagnostic services, either by:

• empowering patients and primary care teams to identify more people with early symptoms
• enabling patients to receive an earlier diagnosis
• reducing strain on services including but not limited to self-assessment tools, pharmacy led triage and direct to test pathways

Harnessing multi-modal approaches: to assess an individual’s cancer risk by considering multiple factors including genomic, demographic, imaging and biomarkers, as well as multianalyte combinations.

This list is not intended to be exhaustive.

Exclusions

We are not funding projects that are:

• companion diagnostics
• therapeutics or treatment development
• discovery research
• routine deployment of late stage technologies into frontline services
• technologies focusing on pure service redesign
• technologies focusing on cancer recurrence detection, monitoring or treatment response prediction

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing event on Thursday 3 September at 2.30pm: register to attend. A recording and slides will be available afterwards.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Health team.