Funding for Australian researchers to develop digital health infrastructure

The Coronavirus Research Response - 2020 Rapid Response Digital Health Infrastructure grant opportunity was announced as part of the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and is part of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) National Health Plan to support our health system to manage the outbreak of novel coronavirus in Australia. This package provides support across primary care, aged care, hospitals and research, and includes funding from the MRFF for a Coronavirus Research Response comprising vaccine, anti-viral and respiratory medicine research.

Digital health approaches and tools have the potential to fundamentally transform the capacity and speed of the health system to respond to urgent and high-need challenges such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

For this grant opportunity funding for high priority digital health infrastructure that has the potential to increase the speed and quality of health system responses during acute crises.

Reflecting the complex Australian digital health landscape, applications to this grant opportunity must demonstrate:

• strong broader applicability (to users, other disciplines, and national scalability)
• alignment with and an identified priority need within existing digital health systems and investment
• sustainability.

The anticipated outcome of the research is to promote the application of innovative digital health approaches to enable health systems to rapidly respond to high-need emerging challenges, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic.

For this grant opportunity you can apply to either stream for grants of $500,000 to $2 million:

• Acute; or
• Non-acute (including non-health care settings).

‘Acute’ refers to acute care provided to patients admitted to hospital that is intended to cure illness, alleviate symptoms of illness or manage childbirth.

‘Non-Acute’ refers to all other relevant settings where digital health approaches are applied, including non-health care settings (such as aged care and correctional facilities).

Reporting templates are available from the MRFF grants management webpage. The page also provides other resources for MRFF grant administration, including current policies and relevant forms and templates.