Exploiting data to improve cancer care: apply for contracts
Organisations can apply for a share of £425,000 to develop new ways of using existing data to improve cancer care in Scotland.
The Data Lab, working with Digital Health and Care Institute (DHI) Scotland and Stratified Medicine Scotland, has up to £425,000 to award in contracts for innovative data science projects.
The aim is to develop ways of using existing NHS Scotland data to improve cancer patient care and outcomes in Scotland.
Bringing together different data sets
Outcomes for cancer patients in Scotland lag behind those of other North European countries.
The NHS in Scotland has a huge amount of clinical and administrative data that could help in improving health care and outcomes for patients with cancer. However, many different data sets are spread across a variety of different information technology systems in different organisations.
What you need to know
Proposals should seek to support at least one of the following:
- analysis of unstructured data (for example, clinical notes or medical imaging)
- data-driven clinical decisions
- data-driven service improvement in the NHS
- data-driven recruitment for clinical trials
- adoption of precision medicine approaches
Potential approaches include predictive analytics, visualisation, machine learning, natural language processing, and processing of structured and unstructured data.
Two-phase competition
Funding for this competition is under the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI).
It will run in 2 phases. The first phase will be for smaller feasibility studies. The most promising projects can win a larger sum to develop their ideas further.
Competition information
- the competition opens on 8 September 2017, and the registration deadline is midnight 27 October 2017
- £175,000 is available for feasibility projects of up to £35,000 and lasting up to 3 months
- £250,000 is available for phase 2 projects of up to £125,000 and lasting up to 6 months
- any organisation that can demonstrate a route to market for its idea, working alone or in partnership with others, may apply
- successful projects will attract 100% funded development contracts
- a briefing event will be held in Edinburgh on 12 October 2017