Cardiovascular Grand Challenge
Funds ambitious, multidisciplinary AI-driven research to achieve major breakthroughs in cardiovascular disease understanding, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment.
Funder: British Heart Foundation
Due Dates: August 5, 2026: Outline application submission deadline | March 31, 2027: Full application submission deadline
Funding Amounts: Up to £10 million per award over a maximum of five years; at least one major award is expected.
Summary: Funds ambitious, AI-driven research collaborations aiming for transformational breakthroughs in cardiovascular disease understanding, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment.
Key Information: Two-stage process: outline then full application; PI must be based at a UK institution; multidisciplinary teams and patient engagement required.
Description
The British Heart Foundation’s Cardiovascular Grand Challenge is a major research funding competition designed to catalyse innovative, collaborative programmes that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to transform cardiovascular health. The 2026 theme focuses on harnessing recent advances in AI methodologies to extract actionable insights from diverse, large-scale datasets—including omics, wearable technologies, clinical imaging, and patient records—to improve understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiovascular disease.
This initiative aims to fund ambitious, multidisciplinary teams that integrate a range of research approaches, disciplines, technologies, and sectors to deliver AI-powered breakthroughs. Strategic investment is intended to drive progress across disease mechanisms, risk determination, early diagnosis, novel therapies, and improved clinical care, with an emphasis on robust management, patient engagement, and leveraging additional support and infrastructure.
