Six digital innovative technologies have been awarded £30,000 each as part of a fund to help people in Scotland lead healthier lives and have more control over their health and care.

A partnership between Nesta and the Scottish Government, the healthier lives data fund aims to support ‘innovative digital technologies that make data available and useful to citizens so they can lead more independent lives’.

The grant recipients include Px Healthcare; an organisation looking to replicate the success of an app it previously developed for breast cancer patients, by creating an app for prostate cancer patients which will use patient-reported data to ‘improve clinical outcomes and the quality of patients’ lives’.

The healthier lives data fund was established through a partnership between the Scottish Government and Nesta – a UK charity that works globally and in partnership with governments, businesses and other charities to support new innovations designed to help societies tackle key challenges.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have also received funding to develop an interactive mobile app to support parents and carers of children going through the autism diagnosis pathway.

NquiringMinds will use its grant to develop ways of enabling cared for persons to have greater control of their care data, ‘empowering them to selectively and securely share their health information with formal and informal carers’.

The programme will begin on the 1st of April and run to December 2019. Sinead MacManus, senior programme manager at Nesta, said:

“We are really excited to announce the six grantees on the Healthier Lives Data Fund. Each day rich health and care data is collected about us. However, much of the value of this data is not accessible to citizens themselves.

“This new fund will put health and care data in the hands of people through a range of digital technologies enabling them to manage their long-term conditions more effectively, navigate the complex autism diagnosis pathway better, or share their care data with the right people at the right time.

“We are pleased to be working in the partnership with the Scottish Government on this fund which has the potential to inspire a new generation of People Powered digital health.”

The Pharmatics project aims to improve the lives of those living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by using artificial intelligence to determine when people are likely to deteriorate with their illness, giving patients more control over their condition.

Another of the grantees will target football supporters through an app called Fan Fit. The University of Salford team hope to improve people’s physical activity and therefore overall health and wellbeing.

Cognicare meanwhile, are to use the funding to develop personalised AI-powered digital technology to provide solutions to dementia care, ‘enabling early intervention and prevention and improving the quality of care for individuals and their families’.