Mindset Extended Reality (XR): Digital Therapeutics for Mental Health Competition (UK)

Scope

• The aim of this competition is to develop digital therapeutic extended reality (XR) solutions to provide mental healthcare services. These solutions will optimally be applied and trialled following an R&D cycle of between 12 to 18 months. Solutions must have the potential to be adopted at scale to form part of the UK’s formal mental healthcare ecosystem.
• Your project must undertake industrial research and development in the application of extended reality (XR), to provide mental healthcare therapeutic solutions. Your proposal must include the design and features of your solution and how it will be applied.

Themes

• Your project must focus on the following:
  • The application of extended reality:
    • A digital therapeutic for mental health through the application of Extended Reality (XR) which includes creative technologies, virtual reality, networked or augmented reality, mixed reality, haptics, holograms, immersive software and immersive audio.
  • Solutions for moderate and severe mental health conditions:
    • Solutions for those living with moderate (where the condition makes daily life difficult) and severe (where conditions make daily life extremely difficult) mental health illness. Specifically, XR therapeutic solutions that positively improve the impairment, disability and distress experienced by those living with mental health difficulties at any point in their life course. Solutions are strongly encouraged, in particular, where the mental health difficulties have an impact on education, employment and daily life.
  • Solutions that can be applied at all clinical levels:
    • Solutions for use at any point in the care pathway, at all clinical levels, which have the ambition to seek regulatory approval, adoption and scale, as and where appropriate.

Funding Information

• Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £3.7 million in innovation projects.
• Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £200,000 and £300,000.

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project must:
  • have total eligible costs between £200,000 and £300,000
  • last between 12 to 18 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • start by 1 July 2025
  • end by 31 December 2026
• Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean they need to delay your project start date.
• You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
• Lead organisation:
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations, if collaborative
  • Academic institutions 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)
• 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.
• To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
• Non-funded partners:
  • Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total eligible 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 cannot 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 in this competition but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications.
  • If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
  • An academic institution, research and technology organisation, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.