Publish date: 2 May 2024

Innovative projects that promote early cancer diagnosis and better care can benefit from funding from West Yorkshire and Harrogate Cancer Alliance.

Building on the successes of previous years, the Cancer Alliance has announced the launch of its innovation competition 2024/25 in collaboration with the Yorkshire and Humber Innovation Network. 

The Innovation Award Scheme is a non-recurrent, revenue-only, financial awards scheme which seeks to:

  • Promote innovation in cancer care
  • Encourage the adoption, acceleration, and deployment of best practice
  • Support the strategic objectives of the Cancer Alliance
  • Ensure that available cancer transformation funding responds to needs identified locally, as well as those taken from policy priorities nationally
  • Create opportunities to improve early diagnosis and patient experience in line with the NHS Long Term Plan  

This year we have refreshed the Awards to have two schemes:

  • Scheme 1 includes reserved funding allocation for Trust, Place, and the VCSE (Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise) sector
  • Scheme 2 is a new competitive funding element, available to any partner eligible for funding under Scheme 1

The competition launches on Wednesday 1st May 2024, followed by a six-week period for development of proposals and completion of applications.  During this time, members of the Cancer Alliance will support informal discussions linked to idea-generation, developing high-quality submissions, and how we would expect pay and non-pay costs to be presented. 

The closing date will be 5pm, Friday 21st June 2024 for all schemes.

The assessment process and allocation of successful awards will take place during July 2024.  Funds will be allotted to the 2024/25 financial year.  The Cancer Alliance will be expected schemes to be mobilised (and started) by the end of the financial year, as a minimum.

Now in its fourth year, previous successful recipients include a project that has led to improvements for cancer patients at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds.

The funding, for a 12-month period from December 2022, enabled the recruitment of an advanced clinical pharmacist to join the pharmacy team at the hospital’s Bexley Wing.

Read more about previous successful recipients here:

Click here for more about a pharmacy initiative in Leeds

Click here for more about a project with people with learning disabilites

For more information please contact the Cancer Alliance at wyicb-wak.wyandhcanceralliance@nhs.net