New multi-million pound Asthma Health Technology Fund launched

The NIHR, EPSRC and Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation have come together to launch a multi-million pound fund to support the development and adoption of asthma health technologies.

Vision of the fund: 

Health technology can be seen as a scalable and effective solution to some of the greatest areas of unmet need in asthma which affects 5.4m people in the UK alone. The intention of this fund is to support the development and adoption of scalable, user-centred and evidence-based tools for the diagnosis, monitoring or management of asthma.

Two funding streams:

The fund will support innovation from the concept stage through to scaling in the NHS in the UK. It is split into two concurrent streams:

Stream 1 – Concept stage: Early R&D of new technologies and Proof of Concept studies (Deadline 11 February 2021).

Stream 2 – Translation and adoption stage: Translational R&D of existing technology, studies generating real-world evidence for existing products, and projects enabling scaling of existing technology into the NHS (Preliminary deadline 9 December 2020).

In addition to people already working in respiratory, applications are also encouraged from:

  • Non-respiratory academics with an interest in health technology (e.g. software and hardware engineering, data science, behavioural science or perhaps other condition areas where health technology is more advanced/widely adopted)
  • SMEs with existing technology that can be applied to asthma

Full details, including the scope, deadlines and the application process, can be found on the Asthma UK website.