Thank you for your interest in working with Devices for Dignity.
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE COMPLETING THE FORM
Thank you for approaching Devices for Dignity (D4D). Quality and inclusivity in healthcare technology and medical devices remain our top priority despite the rapid changing innovation ecosystem. Across our themes we continue to be focused on supporting activity, collaboration requests and project development for people with multiple long-term conditions that cause significant burden to individuals and the healthcare system. Front and centre to all our activity is to ensure that service change and technology development are centred on user needs and outcomes.
NIHR D4D MedTech Co-operative (MIC) has developed an adaptable approach to addressing unmet clinical needs. After a clinical need has been identified, we use our networks of patients and experts to independently refine and validate the need. Once we know exactly what the problem is and that it has a high clinical priority, we can start exploring creative conceptual approaches to addressing the problem, before moving towards producing and refining prototypes. This approach ensures that valuable time and resource are not wasted in developing technologies that are ultimately unlikely to reach the clinic or marketplace.
Having developed prototypes, we then evaluate how they can work in clinical practice and/or as part of people’s daily lives. This helps us to obtain the evidence that we need to achieve the vital CE/UKCA mark, and to provide the information needed by clinical departments and NHS purchasers to enable the device to be used in clinical practice.
When we initiate a project, we work closely with people with experience in industry to ensure that the needs of manufacturers and distributors can be anticipated, such that once we have obtained a CE/UKCA mark, the device can be licensed, produced, and supplied.
We also work directly with companies and individuals that are currently developing innovative technologies that approach us with their own project concepts and devices, where D4D are able to add value to the need validation, product development, value proposition and exploitation planning. You can find out more about ways in which we do this in our 'Work with us' section on our website.
Please fill in this form to describe an unmet need and submit a collaboration request to register your innovation/idea with the D4D team. The turnaround for our review process before engaging with you on next steps is approximately 2 weeks.
Please note that key areas of focus in our current iteration are as follows:
- Unmet needs – What aspects make living day to day with a long-term condition difficult?
- Ideas/solutions (at any stage of development). We welcome the opportunity to hear people’s lived experiences that can help shape development of new devices
- Collaboration requests from industry, academia, and healthcare professionals
There are certain eligibility requirements for acceptance for projects on the D4D portfolio:
- The need / solution must support dignity and independence for people living with one or more Long Term Conditions (LTCs) and positively aid living well for longer.
- The need / solution must fit within at least one of the clinical themes; Long Term Neurological Conditions, Diabetes or Renal and at least one or more of the cross-cutting themes; Assistive Technology & Connected Health, Rehabilitation Technologies, Human Factors, MedTech Innovation, and Integration & Impact.
- If you are submitting a solution, you must be responding to an unmet need and you must have undertaken some exploratory research into this unmet need.
- D4D support requires funding hence your collaboration request should indicate awareness of this and preferably some indication of where funding will be sourced from.
- The collaboration request cannot be seeking solely adoption / diffusion support to access the market – we would advise you contact the AHSN network for this support.
To contact us, please click the 'continue' button below and fill in the form. Information provided via this form will be used as the basis of whether your enquiry will be progressed by the D4D Core Team so we would advise you make it clear what support you are seeking – more information on D4D services can be found here Please note that insufficient information provided may result in your collaboration request not being progressed and returned to you for further completion.