Addiction Healthcare Goals - Catalysing Innovation
The Office for Life Sciences Addiction Healthcare Goals (AHG) is focused on driving innovation in the UK by supporting the development and market readiness of advanced pharmaceutical and MedTech solutions. The AHG's aim is to improve treatment and recovery outcomes and reduce harms from problematic substance use. Through the Innovation Exchange (iX) we’re aiming to foster collaboration between innovators across industry, academia and treatment provision, identify key challenges in developing innovative solutions and the opportunities to support impactful technologies from research to rollout.
Opportunity
Challenge opens
22/09/2025
Challenge closes
17/10/2025
Benefit
The AHG is exploring opportunities to support and fund the research and development of pharmaceutical and MedTech tools addressing unmet needs that help to treat drug and alcohol addiction, aid in recovery, or prevent problematic substance use related harm and deaths. Following this survey, the AHG will be hosting a further sandpit event in the autumn of 2025 which will provide an opportunity to workshop ideas and build consortia and provide further detail on potential further innovation support plans.
Background
Drug addiction causes more than 5,000 preventable UK deaths, with alcohol use estimated to be responsible for over a further 10,000 deaths, per year.
The health and wider societal costs in England of illegal drug use is approximately £20 billion per year, with the harm from alcohol abuse estimated to cost another £27 billion.
From Harm to Hope, published in December 2021, set out the Government's high-level ambition to combat the harm caused by illegal drug use and create an environment that treats addiction as a chronic healthcare condition. The AHG forms a part of this strategy and the ambition to deliver a world-class treatment and recovery system for drug and alcohol addictions.
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