Extended reality (XR) for digital mental health

UK registered businesses and collaborative partners can apply for a share of up to £4 million across two strands of the competition. This is for R&D projects that provide digital mental health therapeutic solutions.

Opportunity Details

When

Registration Opens

02/09/2022

Registration Closes

12/10/2022

Award

Strand 1: project costs £50k-£100k. Strand 2: project costs £100k-£250k. Up to 70% of project costs can be covered, depending on business size.

Organisation

Innovate UK

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Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4 million in innovation projects in the creative technologies sector. This is across two strands of the competition.

The aim of this competition is to develop digital therapeutic Extended Reality (XR) solutions to provide mental health care services. These solutions may be applied and trialled following a two year R&D cycle. They must have the potential to be adopted at scale to form part of the UK’s formal mental healthcare ecosystem.

Your proposal must include the design and features of your solution and how it will be applied.

Projects will undertake research and development in the application of extended reality (XR) to provide mental health care services.

XR refers to Extended Reality and covers Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR), haptics, interfaces, platforms and software. These are often referred to as immersive technologies.

There are two strands in this competition; please ensure you are applying to the correct strand.

For strand 1, covering feasibility studies, your project must:

  • have total project costs between £50,000 and £100,000
  • start by 01 April 2023
  • end by 30 September 2023
  • last between 3 months and 6 months

For strand 2, covering industrial research projects, your project must:

  • have total project costs between £100,000 and £250,000
  • start by 01 April 2023
  • end by 31 March 2025
  • last between 6 months and 24 months

For both strands, you must carry out all project work in the UK, and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK.

To lead a project or work alone your organisation

  • must be a UK registered business of any size.
  • can collaborate with other UK registered organisations

 

business can only lead on one application in this strand but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications. If a business is not leading on an application, it can collaborate in up to three applications in this strand.

An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO) can collaborate in any number of applications, but not lead.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to enable improved delivery of mental health and wellbeing services, through the application of immersive technologies.

Your project must undertake research and development, in the form of industrial research, in the application of Extended Reality (XR) to provide mental health care solutions.

This would be specifically to explore how digital therapeutic content can provide positive mental health applications and outcomes for both young adults (aged 13 and above) and older adults.

Your project must demonstrate that the solution could be applied, trialled and ultimately adopted at scale, to provide a broad benefit to the UK mental health sector.

An online briefing event was held on Tuesday 6th September, 10am-11:30am: click here to watch the recording.

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