Innovator funding Impact on the bottom line W Securing grants and funding for our partners Dr Louise Jopling, Commercial Director at Eastern AHSN hether you are a clinical entrepreneur, a start-up or an academic, we know how important it is for innovators to access capital to develop your ideas and scale your business. But with so many options out there, where do you start and who should you trust? We connect innovators with the healthcare system to improve patient care and create wealth for our economy. We help them focus their efforts on funding sources that are right for them, support them to develop their value proposition and help them write winning applications. Here are just a few of the more significant grants and funding opportunities we have helped innovators to secure this year: ApneScan Apnea-Tech Ltd has identified a clear and unmet need internationally for a low-cost diagnostic aid that assists clinicians to identify people with sleep apnoea. Eastern AHSN was named as a provider of services in ApneaTech Ltds successful bid of 53,000 funding from an Innovate UK Smart Grant to complete a proof of concept and feasibility study on ApneScan. Eastern AHSN will deliver market access workshops in support of the companys development and value proposition. Neutrocheck Eastern AHSN was co-applicant on 52 North Healths successful SBRI phase 2 bid for 999,000 to develop its Neutrocheck test, designed to enable people with symptoms to test for neutropenic sepsis at home using a finger-prick test. After coming through the MedTech Accelerator, of which Eastern AHSN is a partner, we are supporting the innovator to navigate complex commissioning and procurement frameworks through workshops with key stakeholders for the Neutrocheck product, to help embed market access as part of the companys ongoing development. Adaptive Brain Lab Eastern AHSN supported Adaptive Brain Lab with its grant funding bid from The Wellcome Trust. It has developed a clinical decision support tool based on machine learning to help healthcare professionals predict the speed and progression of Alzheimers disease. As a co-applicant, we provided a letter of support and have helped with the development of a health economic analysis to understand the value of the innovation and to identify gaps in its validation, which are now being addressed. Eastern AHSN has also supported and facilitated partnerships with third-party providers to develop software and IT governance support. Adaptive Brain Lab secured 1.5m of grant funding in total. Medwise.ai Medwise.ai received a 311,000 Innovate UK Smart Grant to expand its artificial intelligence-powered clinical question-answering search platform into secondary care settings. The 18-month project will drive the evolution of the platform to support the health care workforce in acute medicine, enable NHSX Digital Technology Assessment Criteria (DTAC) certification and review the technology within an academic research study. Read more about how we have supported Medwise.ai here Securing funding for Norfolks Clinical Research Facility Eastern AHSN supported Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts (NNUHs) successful application for a 1m grant from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) for Norfolks Clinical Research Facility, to drive forward innovation in experimental medicine and translational research. The funding will be spread over five years and will be used to aid the development of new treatments and improve patient care through collaborative projects involving researchers and scientists from NNUH, the University of East Anglia, the Quadram Institute, and across the Norwich Research Park. Eastern AHSN helped with writing the bid and designing the patient and public involvement strategy for the project. DARE UK programme Working alongside the University of Cambridge, Eastern AHSN developed and authored a bid for 200,000 from the Data and Analytics Research Environments (DARE) UK programme and played a supporting role in a second 400,000 application. Both bids were successful, and these two ground-breaking projects will uncover and test early thinking in the development of a more joined-up and trustworthy national data research infrastructure. Read more about the DARE UK programme on page 12 Lumi Nova by BfB Labs Eastern AHSN collaborated with BfB Labs and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust to secure 152,920 from the NIHR Invention for Innovation Programme (Digital Health Technologies for Children and Young Peoples Mental Health) to pilot and evaluate Lumi Nova: Tales of Courage. The intervention is an evidence-based therapeutic game that aims to help 7- to 12-year-olds to overcome anxiety through graded exposure therapy. Eastern AHSN convened the evaluation team and an expert panel to assess how to most effectively develop robust evidence for digital interventions such as Lumi Nova in the future. Read more about Lumi Nova on page 10 Understanding the implementation and impact of remote monitoring pathways We have partnered with the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East of England and a number of integrated care systems in our region to assess the impact of remote monitoring technology on supporting people with a wide range of conditions in the community. This involved securing 274,550 in funding from the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) and the NIHR as part of the NHS Insights Prioritisation Programme (NIPP). The project will run until March 2023.Find out more about this project and our other work in addressing inequalities here Share this article Find the best grants and funding opportunities for you We regularly update our grants and funding opportunities report to help you know what may be available across our networks. Click here to access the latest report now