What it really takes to drive innovation in the NHS

We recently hosted an event on shaping the future of healthcare and driving innovation in the NHS. System partners, innovators and NHS leaders came together to share experience and learnings around how we can accelerate progress, particularly across the three shifts of: analogue to digital, sickness to prevention, and hospital to community. 

Here are five key lessons we took away from the conversations with innovators who joined us. 

1. Bring innovation to people, don’t wait for them to come to it  

Too often it can feel like ideas are being turned into innovations but the people they are being made for are not being reached.  

We need to stop asking people to fit around services and start designing services that fit around people. The key for us has been aligning our innovation with NHS goals, like increasing screening uptake and supporting cervical cancer elimination by 2040.

Valentina Milanova, Founder and CEO of Daye 

With the focus being on increasing the efficiency of the NHS and finding new ways to support people’s health out of the hospital setting, innovations in this space have the chance to shine.  

Testing your ideas with the communities you want to reach and generating data from pilots to demonstrate success is key.  

By bringing PocDoc Healthy Heart Checks to people, as opposed to bringing people to health checks, we demonstrated that engagement with health services tripled or even quadrupled, especially in areas with high health inequalities.

Vladimir Gubala, Co-founder of PocDoc 

2. Real-world deployment builds real-world evidence 

Innovators highlighted that scaling innovation in the NHS often hinge on having enough early evidence before Trusts or ICBs feel confident to adopt. 

Scaling has been difficult, not because of clinical resistance, but because every Trust has its own internal process and it’s rarely clear who the key stakeholders are. Even with strong evidence, navigating who to speak to, how decisions get made, and where funding comes from is different every time.

Barri Morgan Jones, NHS Strategy and Projects Manager at Strolll 

Once innovators have some strong baseline data to show their idea works and fills a vital gap, there is often a hesitation before the big step of adoption in the NHS. There is an opportunity now to do this better, bring the right people together early and improve the experience for innovators and NHS leaders.

3. Innovation can’t afford to wait  

Several innovators shared frustrations about the slow, sequential nature of NHS adoption processes. Clinical safety cases, lengthy procurement cycles, and fragmented system navigation often delay progress, even leaving some people questioning whether to push their ideas into the NHS at all. 

The current speed of technology adoption by NHS is not compatible with the development pace of many innovative, start-up companies. We do not have the luxury of infinite funding that would allow us to wait for approval while not generating any revenue.

Vladimir Gubala, Co-founder of PocDoc 

We need parallel processes, not sequential ones, and far clearer routes to ICBs and local leadership to support our innovators. 

4. Make the NHS a better customer for innovation 

As a system, the NHS needs to improve how it partners with innovation. That means more than buying a product, but ensuring time to co-designing with innovators, supporting frontline staff to test and refine ideas, and share what works across the system. 

The most effective partnerships we’ve seen involve clinical champions not just at the pilot stage, but in the actual design and development process. When clinicians are co-creators rather than end users, you get solutions that fit naturally into workflows.

Simeon Superville, Senior Product Manger of Punto Health 

There’s an opportunity to create a clearer, simpler offer for innovators: 

• Support with evidence generation and validation 

• Access to engaged ICBs and clinical champions 

• Funding models that move beyond short-term grants 

• Guidance on navigating safety cases and adoption pathways 

I envision a future where inValentina Milanova, Founder and CEO of Daye novators and the NHS collaborate as true partners to transform healthcare delivery. By fostering open dialogue, shared goals, and mutual accountability, we can ensure innovations reach patients swiftly, making equitable, preventive care a reality.

Valentina Milanova, Founder and CEO of Daye

5. Incentivise innovation uptake  

The reality is, most innovators are ready. The tech is built, the evidence is there, we’re just waiting for someone in the NHS to say ‘let’s go’.

Barri Morgan Jones, NHS Strategy and Projects Manager at Strolll 

Preventative innovations face unique challenges in that benefits are long-term and often hard to quantify during a one year pilot. The system needs to think differently about how it incentivises uptake. 

We need to create an environment that supports continuous learning and makes it easier for safe and effective innovation to become part of everyday practice. I would like to see even closer collaboration between innovators and the NHS, with a stronger focus on shared outcomes that can help drive change at scale.

Dr Taz Aldawoud, CEO of Doc Abode

We live in a “here and now” culture, but that mindset doesn’t align with long-term health gain. To shift this, we must: 

• Build prevention into care incentives 

• Invest in community engagement 

• Reward systems that reduce downstream demand 

Where to now? 

The UK has world-leading life sciences capabilities and a national health service unlike any other. But unless we address the cultural, structural, and financial barriers to innovation adoption, we will keep seeing great ideas stall.  

Now is a time to start building these relationships between innovators and NHS decision makers. 

We look forward to playing our part in driving the future of innovation. Find out how we are doing this in our latest impact report.