RFPs: Innovative Solutions to address Unmet Needs and Emerging Threats in TB (India)

IHF seeks solutions that integrate health innovations and climate resilience into TB care. Proposals that enhance early detection, improve disease management, and ensure long-term health system resilience will be prioritized. By supporting transformative innovations, IHF aims to bridge existing gaps while future-proofing India’s health systems against emerging threats, ensuring equitable access to high-quality healthcare.

Scope

• Problem Statement 1: Enhancing TB Screening and Diagnostics in High-Risk and vulnerable populations and addressing existing gaps in TB care: Despite global efforts to control tuberculosis (TB), significant gaps persist in the timely detection of the disease, particularly among high-risk and vulnerable populations.
• Need 1: Cost-effective innovations for easy sample collection, handling, and storage, which can minimize the risk of exposure:
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Innovations that improve sample collection (such as tongue swabs), handling, storage, pre-processing, verification, and/or reporting for efficient processing and minimizing sample loss ensuring accurate and reliable diagnostic outcomes.
    • Innovations in sample processing that can enhance the concentration and quality of samples for more accurate testing.
    • Innovations in sample collection tools suitable for the needs of paucibacillary TB cases such as pediatrics, people with HIV, individuals with co-morbidities, or those with low bacterial loads.
• Need 2: Accurate, rapid, affordable, and decentralized TB screening and diagnostic solutions—including non-sputum-based, point-of-care, minimally/noninvasive tools—to improve screening and detection of all forms of TB (pulmonary, extrapulmonary, drug-resistant) suited to address the needs in high-risk (migrant workers, tribals, persons with co-morbidities etc.) and vulnerable populations (pediatrics, immuno-compromised, other vulnerable populations etc):
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Molecular or immunoassay-based solutions that allow for decentralized testing in field settings, suitable for use by health workers in mobile clinics/limited resource settings.
    • Effective TB triaging solutions that can aid in active case-finding, such as breath-based, sound-based, biomarker-based solutions etc.
    • Tools that use alternate sample types such as blood or urine samples to detect low bacterial loads/paucibacillary TB cases.
• Need 3: Scalable and Replicable ready to deploy models for integrated TB screening and diagnostics:
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Scalable, cost-effective approaches that maximize TB case detection within the existing TB care continuum.
    • Innovative deployment models that integrate TB diagnostics with screening for co-infections/co-morbidities (HIV, diabetes) and other respiratory diseases to provide a holistic lung health assessment.
• Problem Statement 2: Bridging the Gaps in TB Detection Across the Disease Spectrum to address TB’s silent and emerging forms: Traditional TB classification, which categorizes the disease as either latent TB infection (LTBI) or active TB, no longer fully captures the complexity of TB progression.
• Need 4: Tools for detecting subclinical/incipient in individuals with sporadic/no symptoms, particularly in high-burden regions:
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Performance enhancements (such as improvements in accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, limit of detection etc.) or repurposing existing tools that can be suitable for the detection of sub clinical TB.
    • Biomarker based innovations that demonstrate potential to identify TB in asymptomatic individuals towards  enabling early intervention in populations at high risk.
• Need 5: Rapid diagnostics for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in high-risk populations:
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Non-invasive diagnostic tools that can be used for LTBI screening such as saliva-based tests, reducing the barriers to regular screening and early intervention.
    • Innovations in multi-antigen assays or immunoassays to detect latent TB in high-risk populations such as healthcare workers and TB contacts.
• Problem Statement 3: Digital Innovations for Strengthening TB Screening, Diagnosis, and Patient Management: Traditional TB diagnostic methods often face challenges related to accessibility, turnaround time, and reliance on specialized skillset.
• Need 6: Digital health tools to improve efficiency, monitoring, and reporting of TB diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up and other associated lung health conditions:
  • Scope of Innovations:
    • Comprehensive lung health platforms/panels to differentiate between TB and other common respiratory infections such as pneumonia, COPD exacerbations, bacterial and viral lower respiratory tract infections and other overlapping lung health conditions such as silicosis, pneumoconiosis, bronchiectasis asbestosis etc. ).
    • Integrated digital health solutions that combine diagnostic data with patient management systems for improved tracking, adherence, and follow-up care, while enabling real-time reporting and monitoring of TB cases and treatment outcomes.
    • AI-based systems to minimize errors due to subjectivity errors associated with the use of existing tools, solutions that aid in automating data entry, and provide actionable insights to support decision making.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applications must be submitted by entities registered and incorporated in India.
• The proposal is relevant and aligned to at least one of the problem statements given above.
• Transparency in furnishing relevant data, including validation/pilot data, in support of the proposed innovation, should be agreeable to the applicant.
• The innovation should be demonstrating improvement over the currently available solutions or approaches in terms of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, safety, turnaround time, usability in peripheral settings, unit pricing.
• Innovation should have the potential for scale-up across diverse settings.
• It is desirable if the innovation is amenable to being multi-disease applicable.
• Applicants are encouraged to consider the impact of climate change as a key factor for design, development and deployment of their innovations.

Ineligibility Criteria

• The following falls outside the scope of the Call and will not be supported by partners:
  • Basic science research.
  • Epidemiological studies/surveys/disease burden analysis.
  • Proposals focused on pure service delivery.
  • Innovations in the ideation/ proof-of-concept stage/ formative studies.
  • Applications which propose incremental solutions without a clear innovative element.
  • Nonalignment with national goals of Government.
  • Nonalignment with the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) related to healthcare.

Selection Criteria

• Proposals should demonstrate a clear understanding of the primary healthcare challenges being addressed and the potential impact on healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. They should also outline a clear path to implementation, including any necessary partnerships or collaborations. They are open to both digital and digitally enabled technologies.
• They welcome proposals from individuals, startups, academic institutions, and established companies. Proposals will be evaluated based on their innovation, feasibility, potential impact, and scalability.

For more information, visit India Health Fund.