Digitalisation and Automation of Medicines R&D and Manufacture

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to encourage the development and implementation of innovative digital and automated data collection technologies. This is to measurably increase the speed and resource efficiency of pharmaceutical process development and manufacturing productivity.

Your proposal must deliver the following benefits:

• drive economic recovery and levelling up by supporting job creation, skills development, and inward investment in digital and automated manufacturing nationwide
• drive health security and patient benefit demonstrating improved productivity and reduced time to market
• de-risk the use of transformative digital and automated data collection technologies
• address net zero and sustainability goals through novel manufacturing technology, showing how digital and automated data collection technologies can improve resource efficiency
• support equality, diversity and inclusion via project initiatives and project outcomes

Your project must:

• have total grant funding requests of between £100,000 and £1 million
• start by 1 June 2023
• end by 31 May 2025
• last between 12 and 24 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Eligibility

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, a research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone, but can collaborate on any number of applications.

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with 2 businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

A business, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications. If a business, RTO, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to encourage the development and implementation of innovative digital and automated data collection technologies. This is to measurably increase the speed and resource efficiency of pharmaceutical process development and manufacturing productivity.

Your project must either, demonstrate an improvement in resource efficiency, for example:

• reduction in waste production
• energy consumption
• carbon emissions

Or your project must show productivity utilising a recognised metric, for example:

• process mass intensity
• overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) as a result of the innovation

Digital and Automated technologies in scope for this competition include but are not limited to:

• data collection, integration and interoperability
• laboratory automation
• development lab of the future
• digital twins
• AI-driven asset uptime and digital batch disposition
• big data, ensuring full evaluation of data and real time decision making
• training and upskilling via augmented reality and virtual reality
• predictive and autonomous supply chain management including predictive yield optimisation and real time tracking and tracing
• process analytical technology (PAT) and real-time release testing (RTRT)

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• lowering manufacturing costs
• reducing environmental impact of medicines manufacturing
• increasing patient access to products
• increasing yield
• increasing productivity
• increasing speed of data processing
• improving efficiency and remove bottlenecks
• supporting process monitoring controls
• supporting data collection and analysis
• combining and use of data and metadata
• gathering and effectively utilising information from across the supply chain

Briefing event

An online briefing event will be held at 2:30pm on Tuesday 15th November: click here for the joining link.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, or advice on your application, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Health team.