The Technology Strategy Board and the Design Council are working in partnership to launch a £600k investment that seeks to generate innovative solutions to help people live independently for longer. Home and Away is a response to the challenges and opportunities arising from the global demographic shift towards an ageing population. We want to develop and promote new attitudes and approaches towards ageing, as well as generate new business opportunities.

The Technology Strategy Board will offer SBRI development contracts with significant financial backing to enable designers and businesses to work with older adults and third sector organisations to develop and test new service solutions that can then be taken to market.

Our programme focuses on tackling two key issues: nutrition and mobility of older adults. We welcome projects covering either or both of these themes. Projects must be collaborative, be led by a commercially-focused organisation, and include a design partner and service provider.

To help facilitate the formation of collaborative consortia we are holding an information and consortia building event on 23 February 2011. This is a two-phase competition in which several successful participants in phase 1 will be given further support to develop their projects.