British Heart Foundation Launches Interdisciplinary, International Challenge
By Bio-IT World Staff
August 27, 2018 | The British Heart Foundation (BHF) launched the Big Beat Challenge over the weekend. The £30 million award is one of the largest and most ambitious of its kind: a challenge to scientists, clinicians, innovators, and entrepreneurs to identify a significant unmet need or opportunity for game-changing innovation in heart and circulatory science or medicine. The award will prioritize international and interdisciplinary entries.
“The Big Beat Challenge seeks to bring people from a vast array of sectors together to unlock new ways of thinking and working, and to bring fresh perspectives to heart and circulatory disease research,” explained Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director of BHF, in an email to Bio-IT World. “With recent advances in technologies like artificial intelligence, data processing and genome editing, the ground is primed for an audacious new initiative that moves beyond incremental gains and accelerates real breakthroughs.”
For more than half a century, BHF-funded researchers have pioneered world-leading efforts to understand the causes of heart and circulatory diseases and develop new methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Despite huge progress, the burden of heart and circulatory diseases continues to rise. Around the world, 18 million people die from heart and circulatory diseases each year. The WHO expects this to rise to 23 million by 2030.
A call for outline applications to the Big Beat Challenge will open at the end of 2018 and close in mid-2019. Proposals should identify a problem or opportunity, which, if solved or seized at scale, would mean major progress toward real patient benefit. Proposals should be transformative, clinically relevant, and with a multi-disciplinary approach that couldn’t be done without funding on this scale. Ideas could transform the lives of a few, or provide a smaller but important change for many.
“We want to see evidence that applicants have actively sought out collaborators and partners that will bring fresh thinking to the field of cardiovascular research, and combine expertise in a way this is not already happening,” said Samani.
The winning team can come from any country, sector or discipline, working on a scale above and beyond traditional research schemes to achieve a truly revolutionary breakthrough in any heart or circulatory disease. All projects must have structured project management with clear goals and milestones, the published criteria state.
“This will be one of the largest awards of its kind. It is without borders and without boundaries,” Samani said in the announcement. “The winning project will be truly transformative, and something that simply couldn’t happen without funding on this scale. The ideas can tackle any heart or circulatory condition using any approach. All we ask is that you think big.”
The BHF is assembling an international, multi-disciplinary, expert advisory panel to oversee the Big Beat Challenge. Shortlisted applications with the most promising ideas will be given seed funding, and teams will then have around six months to develop their final proposals. These full applications will then be peer-reviewed and the winning research program recommended by the panel.
