Strand 1 is open to any innovator organisation in the UK or EU (business, academic, RTO or public sector) with a demonstrable partnership with at least one adopting NHS organisation and an independent evaluation partner.

Your innovation must have a CE mark or equivalent regulatory approval obtained (if required for the innovation) for the cancer-related use intended, and evidence of safety and clinical utility from prospective use in at least one healthcare site.

Strand 2 is only open to Integrated Care Boards or Cancer Alliances in England (via their host legal entity) with transitional funding commitment from the local Integrated Care Board(s).

For strand 1, projects can have costs of up to £3m and 24 months. Applicants can apply for 100% of project costs. Costs quoted must reflect actual costs at a “fair market value” and profit should not be included.

For strand 2, up to £5m is available for the first 2 years of a 3 year project. Year 3 must be 100% funded by the ICB.

Projects must involve implementing and  evaluating the impact of a solution across multiple sites in the NHS in England.

Through this round of the Innovation Open Call for cancer, the NHS Cancer Programme is looking for innovations or new approaches that will:

1. Improve productivity through managing demand or improving capacity on cancer care pathways – to support the NHS in meeting all Cancer Waiting Time standards by March 2029 (Challenge 1)
2. Drive the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer (through novel screening, prompt presentation, case-finding, or diagnostic tools) – to help ensure three quarters of people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free, or living well with cancer after 5 years by 2035 (Challenge 2).

Although an innovation may have relevance to both challenges, Innovation Open Call applicants are invited to select the challenge for which they have the strongest supporting evidence, as the application form and assessment questions are tailored to the selected category.

For full details and background, read the challenge brief from the NHS Cancer Programme.

For Challenge 1, the NHS Cancer Programme is looking for proposals that support the following. Please note that digital innovations should clearly demonstrate value-add and (where relevant) interoperability with national digital platforms such as the Federated Data Platform / Cancer360 pathway management tool.

1. Managing demand by ensuring more effective triage of potential cancer cases, leading to faster diagnosis:
   a. Innovations or new approaches that enable more effective triage in primary or community care, enabling quick rule-out of cancer and avoiding unnecessary referrals onto urgent suspected cancer pathways
   b. Innovations such as AI tools used to triage cases referred onto urgent suspected cancer pathways to enable faster discharge of benign cases and/or accelerated diagnostic procedures for high-risk cases
2. Releasing capacity to enable faster diagnosis:
   c. Innovations or more coordinated, multidisciplinary approaches that require fewer tests or diagnostic visits to achieve a definitive diagnosis e.g. same-day or co-located diagnostics, taking into account patient choice
   d. Innovations such as AI-decision support tools that speed up diagnostic decision-making
   e. Digital innovations e.g. ambient voice AI tools that reduce administrative burden, enable better patient management, reduce Did Not Attend rates, and release capacity on cancer pathways to assess more potential cancer cases
3. Releasing capacity to enable more patients to be treated more quickly
   f. Innovations that enable more efficient and effective decision-making during multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings
   g. Innovations that support efficiencies in treatment planning to create more ‘time to care’

Challenge 2 – Drive the earlier detection and diagnosis of cancer (through novel screening, prompt presentation, case-finding, or diagnostic tools) – to help ensure three quarters of people diagnosed with cancer will be cancer-free, or living well with cancer after 5 years by 2035

The National Cancer Plan sets an ambitious new survival target of three quarters of people diagnosed with cancer being cancer-free or living well with cancer after five years. Diagnosing cancer at an earlier stage means it is more treatable, and that treatment is more likely to achieve a cure. The National Cancer Plan acknowledges that ‘there is no path to world leading cancer survival without world leading early diagnosis.’

For Challenge 2, the NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call is looking for innovations or new ways of working that will drive earlier stage detection and diagnosis – the following technologies are highlighted in the National Cancer Plan as potential opportunity areas:

• Blood biomarker tests, that will increasingly enable population-scale asymptomatic detection
• Saliva, urine and breath diagnostics, that enable at-home and more frequent testing
• Wearable technology that, in combination, will increasingly indicate when intervention is needed
• Faster, more local and more portable diagnostics – so that risk can be met with intervention proactively, without the need for multiple long waits

Considering the patient pathway, the NHS Cancer Programme is looking for proposals that support:

1. Identifying and testing asymptomatic patients who are most at risk:
   a. Innovations that proactively identify and/or risk stratify populations for whom there is no current NHS cancer screening programme, such as saliva, blood, urine or breath-based tests or case-finding through GP records
   b. Innovations to more effectively target, improve uptake/adherence, or reduce unwarranted variation in established NHS cancer screening programmes
2. Encouraging early symptomatic patients to notice health changes and present to primary care or other appropriate services:
   a. Innovations that proactively case find those with early signs and symptoms associated with risk of cancer
   b. Innovations to improve awareness/vigilance of the signs and symptoms of cancer (including vague or non-specific symptoms), particularly for those cancers, or specific populations, where early presentation is still very low
   c. Innovations that encourage patients to seek health advice, including in specific populations that typically under-present or where presentation is delayed
3. Earlier diagnosis for symptomatic patients through risk stratification and improved diagnostic pathways:
   a. Innovations that support the assessment and triage of cases referred on to urgent suspected cancer pathways, effectively identifying cancer cases that would otherwise have been missed and/ or accelerating diagnostic procedures for those at higher risk
   b. Innovations that enable a definitive diagnosis at an earlier stage in the disease course, avoiding having to ‘watch and wait’ e.g. robot-assisted biopsies

The competition is open to any market-ready innovation with evidence of safety and clinical utility from prospective use in at least one healthcare setting, that is ready for implementation and evaluation across multiple NHS sites.

With reference to the individual challenges, the following requirements must be met:

Challenge 1 – Productivity

• CE mark or equivalent regulatory approval obtained (if required for your innovation) for the cancer-related use intended within the application; and
• Evidence of safety and clinical utility from prospective use in at least one NHS site specifically for the intended cancer-related purpose described in the application

Challenge 2 – Early detection and diagnosis

• CE mark or equivalent regulatory approval obtained (if required for your innovation) for the cancer-related use intended within the application; and
• Evidence of safety and clinical utility from prospective use in at least one healthcare setting specifically for the intended cancer-related purpose described in the application

Exclusions

The following innovations will be excluded from this competition because either there are other entities that are better placed to fund such innovations or they are unlikely to effectively address either of the two challenge areas set out above:

• Innovations that are in the ideation/creation phase and have not yet sought regulatory approval and do not have an evidence base. Types of regulatory approval include CE marking and UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed). National guidance on regulatory approvals
  can be found here. Innovations must have regulatory approval (and associated prospective evidence from at least one site) for the use intended through the proposed project.
• Treatments, including small molecules therapeutics, drugs, vaccines and gene therapies.
• Workforce training solutions
• Wellness or wellbeing digital applications
• Innovations that do not have prospective evidence specific to the cancer pathway and intended use proposed in the project (for example, innovations with evidence generated in non-cancer pathways or different clinical uses)

Projects must involve implementing and evaluating the impact of a solution across multiple sites in the NHS in England.

The aim of the Real World Implementation and Evaluation Fund is to facilitate adoption and spread of innovations that already have prospective evidence of safety and clinical utility from at least one healthcare site. Projects must, therefore, involve embedding the innovation into practice across multiple sites within the NHS in England.

The project should be an implementation study in real-world settings involving appropriate real-world evaluation methodologies such as pre-post implementation evaluation or a comparative cohort design (where the innovation is implemented at certain sites but comparator, real-world data is sourced from appropriately matched ‘non-implementation’ sites). If sufficient data is routinely collected, retrospective data can be assessed to determine the ‘pre-implementation’ state.

Innovations that have received a NICE Early Value Assessment (EVA) may use this funding to address evidence gaps identified through the assessment, alongside real‑world implementation activity. Any evidence generation must use pragmatic, real‑world designs, such as those described above and all activities must be proportionate and deliverable within the maximum 24‑month project duration.

Evaluations should include process, impact (including on patient experience), and health-economic elements. Evaluations should consider the barriers and enablers to implementation, as well as resources required for large-scale commissioning.

At the end of the project, the innovation should be embedded into practice in a number of NHS locations, there should be a high-quality independent evaluation report, and a well-defined plan for continued commissioning and/or scale-up, as appropriate.

Examples of potential exit points include:

• Health economics assessment
• Innovation independently evaluated to demonstrate its impact in real-world settings
• Collation of evidence for NICE recommendation (e.g. Early Value Assessment or Health Technology Guidance)
• Completion of procurement business cases to support transition into business-as-usual via standard commissioning routes
• Inclusion on national procurement frameworks

For full details, and scope for strand 2, read the challenge brief from the NHS Cancer Programme.

A briefing webinar for those interested in finding out more about this competition will be hosted on 18 June at 3.15pm. Register for the briefing webinar here.

For any enquiries, e-mail sbri@LGCGroup.com.

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