The Technology Strategy Board, in partnership with the Department of Health (DH), is to invest up to £2.5m in collaborative research and development to advance the effective use of biomarkers in the management of sepsis. The scope of the competition will include projects that aim to evaluate how biomarkers could be used more effectively to support and inform clinical decisions. The Ministry of Defence and the Home Office have also expressed an interest in funding this competition; decisions will be made on a project-by-project basis.

Proposals should be collaborative and business-led. It is envisaged that applicants will establish relationships with clinical experts and microbiologists to discuss appropriate access to patient samples, and to ensure that the project design could give rise to a new generation of products of value to healthcare workers in decreasing the impact of sepsis.

We expect most applications will be for applied research attracting up to 50% of the total project costs; but some work packages in the industry-orientated basic research category, which can attract up to 75% public funding, are expected. Projects should last up to three years.

Our HealthTech and Medicines Knowledge Transfer Network will be organising events and providing further information on this competition, and offering networking and consortia-building opportunities: https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/healthktn

Further competition information

There are three competitions in the DIIA innovation platform’s second series; all three are complementary but Sepsis I and Sepsis II are especially linked and aim to provide a comprehensive portfolio of projects to improve the future diagnosis and management of infectious diseases and sepsis.

The third competition “Assessing the impact of near-patient testing” will be managed through the SBRI programme. The competition will result in investment of up to £1m in projects to produce new and improved health economics products, tools or capabilities to assist companies in the design and evaluation of diagnostic clinical trials. It is envisaged that the new tools will lead to better adoption, where appropriate, by providing assessors and decision makers with high quality data on the impact of new diagnostic products.