CIHR Catalyst Grant : Reimagining acute care – Application

Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery

Deadlines

Academic Unit: Inquire with unit

Memorial Deadline: Monday 20th, July 2026

External Deadline: Thursday 23rd, July 2026

Description

This Catalyst Funding Opportunity is part of CIHR-ICRH’s Reimagining Acute Care Initiative, focused on delivering better outcomes for all Canadians through research and evidence-informed decision-making in the research areas defined by ICRH’s mandate: the heart; brain (stroke); lung; blood and blood vessels; sleep and critical care. (Updated: 2026-04-10)

Conditions within ICRH’s mandate represent a significant health challenge in Canada, causing approximately one-third of all deaths and accounting for four of the ten most expensive reasons for hospitalizations. Acute care in the hospital setting accounts for Canada’s largest annual health expenditure. Many of these conditions, such as heart failure, asthma, and high blood pressure, are Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions where hospitalization may be avoided if managed with timely pre-acute care interventions. Late arrival to hospital care leads to complications, longer stays, and chronic disease development. Importantly, acute care access and outcomes are also largely influenced by social and economic factors. Therefore, certain groups like low income, rural and remote, racialized, immigrant and Indigenous populations experience additional barriers to optimal outcomes. Taken together, these observations highlight the need for a more integrated research approach to prevent or improve acute care outcomes.

Patient care in Canada is delivered through different phases and by different entities of the healthcare system. While acute care itself is often delivered by hospitals, pre-acute and post-acute care is delivered in different settings, such as primary care clinics or community-based centres. Although intended to prevent hospitalization or to enable effective discharge planning, our public healthcare system often leads to fragmentation of care resulting in the accumulation of disease burden as acute illness progresses to co- or multi-morbidity, costly readmissions and polypharmacy. Moreover, siloed research fields and disciplines hinder the integration of research across the care continuum. Addressing these challenges requires an integrated approach that links discovery directly to patient care through converging science initiatives.

Canada’s health data ecosystem is undergoing a profound transformation. Building on national strengths in data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health infrastructure, new technologies are enabling innovative ways to analyze and intervene in real-time on large volumes of heterogenous health information. In addition, novel technologies have the potential to accelerate research and help narrow the gap between discovery science and implementation. Seizing this transformational momentum requires expanding capacity and fostering collaboration in the research community within ICRH’s mandate. Partnerships that leverage AI, computational science, and digital tools will help to catalyze the full potential of health data, drive innovation, advance science, and enable evidence-based decision making at the point of care.

To maximize impact and outcomes, ICRH will focus on improving the care continuum by connecting pre-acute, acute and post-acute care phases (see Research Areas section for a definition of different phases), using an interdisciplinary science approach to promote resilient health across the lifespan.

This funding opportunity will foster collaboration between researchers from different research fields, at different stages of their career, and promote research on different phases of the care continuum. It will also harness new technologies leading to more impactful research within ICRH’s mandate area. This will be achieved through a coordinated approach utilizing diverse funding pools, each tailored to the collaboration-readiness of participating teams. Ultimately, the funding opportunity is intended to prepare the research community to become more competitive for cross-pillar, interdisciplinary networks, a critical aspect through which the Reimagining Acute Care Initiative, will fund and foster projects within ICRH’s mandate. (Updated: 2026-04-10)

Strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations will enable Canadian researchers and the healthcare sector to improve evidence-based decision-making along the care continuum and lay the foundation to reduce the burden of disease, improve treatment outcomes and accelerate recovery.

See ResearchNet for more information.

Funding Sources

Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR)