Innovate UK: Mindset extended reality (XR) for digital mental health: strand 2

Overview

The aim of this competition is to is to develop digital therapeutic Extended Reality (XR) solutions to provide improved delivery of mental health and wellbeing services.

This competition is split into two strands:

Mindset: Extended reality (XR) for digital mental health – strand 2: Industrial Research (this strand)
Mindset: Extended reality (XR) for digital mental health – strand 1: Feasibility Studies

Your solution must plan to be applied and trialled following an industrial research cycle of between 6 months and 20 months. It 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.

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process.

Your project’s total costs must be between £100,000 and £300,000.

Who can apply

Your project must:

have total project costs between £100,000 and £300,000
last between 6 months and 20 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
start by 1 June 2024
end by 31 March 2026

If your project has total costs of below £100,000 or above £300,000 you will be made ineligible and will not be sent for assessment.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

Lead organisation

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

Academic institutions and RTOs cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

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

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

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business can only lead on one application in this strand but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications.

A business not leading an application, an academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit, or public sector organisation can be included as a collaborator in up to three applications in this strand of the competition.

Further information

This competition provides funding in line with the UK's obligations and commitments to Subsidy Control. Further information about the UK Subsidy Control requirements can be found within the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation agreement and the subsequent guidance from the department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

EU State aid rules now only apply in limited circumstances. Please see their general guidance to check if these rules apply to your organisation. If you are unsure about your obligations under the UK Subsidy Control regime or the State aid rules, you should take independent legal advice. They are unable to advise on individual eligibility or legal obligations.

Funding

Up to £4.5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

Your Proposal

The aim of this competition is to is to develop digital therapeutic Extended Reality (XR) solutions to provide improved delivery of mental health and wellbeing services.

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

Your proposal must specifically explore how digital therapeutic content can provide positive mental health applications and outcomes for young adults (aged 13 and above) or 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.

Portfolio approach

They want to fund a variety of projects across the two competition strands, themes, geographic regions and mental health conditions. They call this a portfolio approach.

Specific themes

Your project must focus on a digital mental health therapy through the application of Extended Reality (XR).

Research categories

They will fund feasibility projects as defined in the guidance on categories of research.

Track grant Notes