Aims

The aim of this call is to support data science on COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease and/or diabetes, with a total fund of £500,000 to support new or existing research as part of the CVD-COVID-UK Consortium. Up to £150,000 has been ring-fenced for diabetes-linked research.

We expect to fund 8-12 projects in total. The resulting research outputs will increase understanding of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and COVID-19 and will inform policy,  ultimately benefiting patients and their carers.

Background 

The BHF Data Science Centre was set up to enable and accelerate data-led research to improve the public’s heart and circulatory health. During the pandemic, much of our work switched to focus on COVID-19.

CVD-COVID-UK

One area of our current activity is the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium, which brings together researchers from all over the UK to look at the relationship between cardiovascular health and COVID-19. The programme allows linkage across patient datasets within three national Trusted Research Environments (TREs) in the UK to help understand the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease.  Approved researchers can remotely access and link de-identified datasets including national hospital, primary care, and COVID-19 test data with cardiovascular datasets.

Diabetes Data Science Catalyst

More recently, we launched the Diabetes Data Science Catalyst with our partners – HDR UK, Diabetes UK and the British Heart Foundation – to advance data-led research into the links between cardiovascular disease and diabetes, two of the world’s most pressing health concerns.

This call for funding will enhance work in both these key areas and enable researchers to make impactful, health-relevant findings at speed.

Scope

This call is to fund researchers who are existing members of – or are willing to join – the CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT consortium. If the project is of relevance to the Diabetes Data Science Catalyst, applicants must also be willing to join this diabetes working group. The funding is available for up to nine months.

Out of Scope: The COVID-IMPACT programme is an expansion of the CVD-COVID-UK to address research questions looking at the impact of COVID-19 on other health conditions and their related risk factors, COVID-IMPACT projects cannot be considered for this funding call.

Eligibility 

Applications are invited from researchers at an eligible research organisation, including universities, NHS bodies and government-funded organisations. Applicants may only submit one application to this initiative as a principal investigator, but may be involved in more applications if listed as a co-investigator.

To apply 

The call is now open for applications and will close at 17:00 BST on 1 May 2023.

For further information please download the call specification, finance forms and proposal submission form here.  All proposals to be submitted to bhfdsc@hdruk.ac.uk by the deadline.

For queries/clarifications please email bhfdsc@hdruk.ac.uk

List of documents