Mindset: Extended Reality for Digital Mental Health – Industrial Research (UK)

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £4.5 million in innovation projects across the two strands of the competition.

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.

Project Size

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

Projects They Will Not Fund

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • early-stage research
  • unsuitable for potential trial following an industrial research cycle of up to 20 months
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • 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
  • 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.
  • You can collaborate with other UK registered organisations, but you are limited to collaborations of no more than five, this includes the lead and up to four partners.
• 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)
  • Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. 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. They 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 but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications in this strand of the competition.
  • 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.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.