Call for proposals for development or innovation projects in the area of medical technology innovation for children with cancer 2019

Aim
Barncancerfonden and MedTech4Health call for proposals for development or innovation projects in the area of medical technology innovation for children with cancer. The purpose is to generate products or services that contribute to an improved health care and welfare for children with cancer and their families. Projects may address development of new techniques for children with cancer or adaption of existing medical technology for children.

Terms and conditions for the call
The proposal should proceed from a clear medical research problem and contain a description of the project's relevance for children with cancer. A proposal for technical solution is also to be described. Barncancerfonden defines medical technology as products associated with medicine with the exceptions pharmaceuticals and biotechnology. This includes, but is not limited to, irradiation technology, orthopedical implants, minimal invasive surgery, aids for people with disabilities, adaption of analysis techniques, IT support, and disposable items. This also includes children-adapted design of existing products in order to facilitate medical treatment of children.

Projects can be up to 3 years. The call also comprises development projects and projects for clinical adaption for children. Fundamental research projects and projects without company partners are applied for in the general call for medical technology projects from Barncancerfonden.

Eligibility to apply
Grants are applied for by a constellation of partners from at least two of the sectors healthcare, academia, and industry. Refer also to main- and co-applicants under separate heading below. Partners include universities, hospitals, companies, research institutes, or other organization with research as its main purpose. The constellation main and co-applicant shall have competence in technology, health care, and business acumen.

All partners in the constellation must be independent from each other. For example, an individual researcher cannot apply with his/her spin-out company as co-applicant. An individual researcher with a joint employment at a university and a hospital is considered as one partner.

The main applicant shall have, or intend to locate, the main activity in Sweden. Co-applicant companies shall be registered in Sweden. International project partners can be co-applicants but not grant recipients.

Main- and co-applicants
One of the partners from healthcare or academia is the main applicant and the other partners are co-applicants. Industry partners can only be co-applicants and receives the disbursement of its part of the grant from MedTech4Health. All co-applicants are presented on the tab “Medsökande” in the application form. The co-applicant company itself is presented on the tab “Medsökande företag”.

After the imposition of The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679, also known as GDPR, the following apply for handling of co-applicants:

• All co-applicants must confirm their participation before the application can be submitted.
• The main applicant is responsible to inform all co-applicants about this.
• The main applicant fills in the co-applicant information.
• The co-applicant confirms participation via an e-mail generated from the system after the co-applicant is registered.
• Co-applicants that have not confirmed their participation must be deleted by the main applicant before the application can be submitted.

General terms
Refer to the separate document "General terms" in the application system.

Specific terms
Funding allocated to a company partner can be a maximum of 50% of the company’s total eligible costs. Company partners shall co-finance the project with at least 100 000 SEK. Co-financing is not required from other partners. Barncancerfonden does not finance eligible costs for company partners. Barncancerfonden finances indirect costs with a maximum of 18% of the direct costs (supplement charge). For the part of the grants financed by Barncancerfonden, a maximum of 25% of the respective salaries of the main and co-applicant may be covered by grant.

About the grant
The grant is a block grant unless otherwise stated in the decision letter.

Evaluation criteria
Submitted applications are evaluated by Barncancerfonden’s research committee for medical technology together with external reviewers. The evaluation criteria are: research problem, methodology, merits of the applicants/feasibility, business advantage, and relevance for childhood cancer.

Administration
Barncancerfonden finances eligible costs for partners from health care and academia. MedTech4Health finances eligible costs for company partners. Allocated grants are distributed between the partners according to the grant decision. Part of an allocated grant to health care and academia shall be administered by a Swedish university, hospital, research institute or other organization with research as its main purpose. Part of an allocated grant to an industry partner is disbursed directly to the company.

Application documents
A complete application is submitted via the application system. The last day for application is found on the web page of Barncancerfonden. A complete application includes a filled-in form and a project description uploaded as an attachment in PDF file format (maximum 2 MB). Incomplete or late applications will not be evaluated.

The project description should have an overall aim and a number of specific goals. The aim may be visionary but the goals should be written as specific as possible. The project goals should be directly comparable to the final report where the progress and results from the project will be described. 

The project description should be maximum 6 A4 pages including references (12 ppt Times New Roman, single space, automatic line break) and contain the following headings:

• Aim and goals; present the overall aim and the specific goals of the research project.
• Background; describe the health care and welfare problem or challenge addressed. Summary of your own and others work and results within the area.
• Literature references of importance
• Preliminary results; describe your own experiments/pre-studies/prototype within the area. What has been done so far? Describe the development status.
• Work plan; summarize the project planning and present a timetable. Describe theories, methods and implementation. 
• Product idea; describe the intended product or service and its potential. In what way is the product idea innovative and unique?
• Market situation; describe the intended market. What are the customer groups? What competitive solutions exist or are under development within your area? Who is the needs-owner, who decides and who pays?
• Commercialization/utilization; describe your strategy for how the idea is to be commercialized and utilized. What national and international cooperations might be needed in order to commercialize the product idea? Can the development work continue after potential financing?
• Intellectual property rights/IPR; What is the strategy for IPR? Have you applied for or plan to apply for patent or is that irrelevant in your case? Describe why. What function/property is patented or patent pending? Have you performed a novelty search of your idea? Are there existing patents that may prevent implementation?
• International and national collaboration: short description of collaboration with foreign and Swedish researchers, research groups, organizations or clinical partners.  
• Equality; describe how you within the project have taken gender equality into consideration in the choice of project leader and composition of project group/project partners. Are there gender aspects related to the project problem area or solutions that are important to take into consideration in the implementation (and that might increase the potential and quality of the project)?

Note that the application may not be submitted electronically if mandatory information is missing. After submission, the first page of the application must be printed, signed, and sent to Barncancerfonden no later than one week after the last day of the application period. Revisions to submitted applications are not allowed.

The signed first page is to be sent to:
forskning@barncancerfonden.se

Application period
Refer to the web page of Barncancerfonden. Incomplete or late applications will not be evaluated. Note that the application system closes at 14:00 the last day for application.

Organization of the application
Instructions on how to fill in the application form is found in the top right corner on each tab.

The application may be written either in English or in Swedish with the following exceptions:
• The popular science title shall be written in Swedish.
• The project title shall be written in English.
• The popular science summary shall be written in Swedish.
• The summary shall be written in English.

Contact
For questions about the call, contact

Anders Höglund, Research coordinator Barncancerfonden
Telephone: 08-584 209 31
E-mail: anders.hoglund@barncancerfonden.se

or

Ulla Elofsson, Call responsible MedTech4Health
Telephone: 010-516 6040
E-mail: ulla.elofsson@ri.se