MRFF- Frontier Health Stage 1 grants in 2020 - What's changed?

Guidelines for the upcoming round of Frontier Health Stage 1is available on:
https://business.gov.au/Grants-and-Programs/Frontier-Health-and-Medical-Research  
(This funding opportunity is still not yet on Grant Connect).

The guidelines are still very broad in regards to what type of program could be submitted for consideration.

Some changes to note:
Guidelines for the upcoming round of Frontier Health Stage 1is available on:
https://business.gov.au/Grants-and-Programs/Frontier-Health-and-Medical-Research 

1. They have added more detail to several sections (guidelines are now 8 pages longer).
2. Objectives are stated somewhat more clearly
•  promote multi-disciplinary partnerships and approaches that enable transformative research and innovation 
• accelerate new technological advances in health care 
• facilitate new health care methods, systems and approaches across the full spectrum of the care continuum (prevention to clinical management) 
• stimulate the creation of new research and industries 
• enable projects that have the potential to transform health care in Australia and globally.  
3. The description of the program no longer uses words like "first in world" (or "out of the box" as was in the last announcement). Instead of just talking about Australia leading markets and create new ones it also now talks about  the potential to lead health service delivery and create new markets for health related products by applying cutting-edge science and technologies to innovation that has the potential to improve human health.  The addition of health service delivery is interesting as what was funded in the last round was heavily focussed on devices.
4. The Assessment Criteria are significantly revised and now included 3 equally weighted parts including a new methodology section. The Impact of Funding criteria has been removed. There is a new unweighted "Risk" section (we have seen this on other MRFF grants).
5. There is more emphasis on Encouraging Partnerships (again we have seen this section on other MRFF grants).  While the impact of funding including leverage is no longer accessible criterion the guidelines now state. Partnerships and co-investment are encouraged in order to maximise impact of investment, provide opportunities for more mature sites/agencies to build the capacity of emerging sites/agencies, reduce duplication of activities, and reduce potential respondent administrative burden on participating communities.
6. Project plan is now limited to 12 pages 
7. The Assessment period will be longer and these initial Stage 1 grants will run to the end of July 2021 (rather than the end of June as they currently do). But they are unlikely to start until the End of July 2020 due to the closing date and assessment period.
8. The Assessment panel is still Australian and International experts (no more detail than that) but they have now published a rating scale for the weighted and unweighed criteria. See Appendix C and D. 
9. From a separate email communication I had with the Dept of Innovation (who will run the grant round on behalf of the MRFF)  they said they  anticipate that Stage Two Guidelines are expected to be available prior to closing for applicants under Round 2 of Stage One.  This is great news as we'll have more insight into what they want to achieve with Stage 2 grants to help us appropriately frame this new round of Stage 1 grants.

For further information, contact: 

Vanalysa Ly 

vanalysa.ly@monash.edu

857 22606