United Kingdom Defense Wearable Technologies

The Defence & Security Accelerator (DASA), on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), seeks to identify and develop Generation-after-next Wearable Technologies. Developments in functional and biocompatible materials, combined with novel measurement methods, have led to the emergence of a new generation of wearable sensor technologies.

The MOD is asking industry and academia to submit proposals that include technologies that can access and monitor biomarkers in body fluids over a significant number of hours. The MOD is eager to test accepted proposals to ensure that the devices can be readily adapted to continuously monitor a variety of target analytes, such as enzymatic or biochemical functionalities, metabolites, or immune markers.  

All projects accepted by the MOD must be completed by 28 February 2024 and achieve a Technology Readiness Level 2-4. 

The MOD will give preference to:

•    Devices and approaches that aim to be widely exploitable across several classes of biomarker (enzymes, metabolites or other small molecules),

•    Studies and sensor systems that will demonstrate flexibility to new biomarker panels as they emerge from human science research studies,

•    Provide broad awareness of the utility of accessible biofluids in providing robust measures of biomarkers that have utility in supporting decision making.

Model systems that are proposed can be broad in potential application area within the confines of monitoring for changes in human health in response to physical and environmental stressors. However, proposals that look to demonstrate sensor performance alone, without considering how the output may provide timely robust information to inform decision making, will not be accepted.

Your proposal to the MOD should include evidence of:

•    Solutions focused on critical technical challenges that limit the application of generation-after-next wearable technologies to Defense and Security applications,

•    Solutions that offer a balance of sensor performance with relevance and timeliness of the measure provided,

•    A clear vision for how proof-of-concept demonstrations of low TRL technologies might transition towards exploitable platform technologies for monitoring of defense staff in the context of challenging environmental or physically demanding environments.

For information on how to submit your proposal to the MOD on Generation-after-next Wearable Technologies, or for information on other opportunities in the UK defense and security sectors, please contact PJ Menner at the U.S. Embassy London.