Annual impact report 2025-26
Looking ahead
As health and care services face growing pressure, our focus remains clear: helping innovation deliver better outcomes for patients, communities and the NHS workforce.
Over the past year, we have supported three innovation events with Royal Free London, University College London Hospitals and Moorfields Eye Hospital. These brought NHS staff together with academics, engineers, patients, industry and other partners to explore frontline challenges in robotic microsurgery, AI in anaesthesia and day-to-day clinical practice, and to develop potential solutions. This work reflects the collaborative, problem-focused approach that will be central to our new Invention Service.
Over the coming year, we will build our new Invention Service with Barts Health, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Royal Free London, University College London Hospitals, University College London and Queen Mary University of London. The service will help NHS staff turn frontline insight into practical innovations that improve care. It will give clinical teams the knowledge, tools and support they need to develop ideas into solutions that can be tested, adopted and scaled.
We will continue to prioritise some of the most significant health challenges facing patients and the NHS, including cardiovascular disease, dementia, obesity and long-term conditions.
This includes our partnership with Alzheimer’s Society, the spread and scale of CVD Action, and work to improve treatment and pathways for people living with long-term conditions. We’re also looking forward to helping Havering London Borough Council identify potential partners and funding opportunities to make a Youth Employment Crash Course, co-designed by young people in our Kailo group this year, a reality.
Through the Health Innovation Network, we will continue to contribute to priorities where coordinated action can help proven innovations spread across England. This includes helping to develop the Network’s pipeline of cardiovascular, renal and metabolic innovations, and co-leading national support for the adoption of ambient voice technology.
We will also help build the infrastructure London needs to attract talent, investment and innovation that delivers value for patients and the NHS.
We are a key partner in the London Sandbox, which will create a secure, real-world environment to test AI-enabled health technologies safely.
We are also a co-delivery partner for the London Secure Data Environment, a major development for health research and innovation in the capital. It will provide the secure data infrastructure needed to help researchers, innovators and health and care partners generate evidence, test ideas and improve services in ways that protect privacy and maintain public trust.
Our role is to support its development and implementation, helping ensure this infrastructure is shaped around real health system needs and can support responsible innovation that delivers better outcomes for patients and communities.
We are excited for the year ahead, working across our fantastic partnership: backing frontline innovators, strengthening routes for adoption, and helping partners use innovation to improve care, reduce inequalities and deliver better outcomes for patients and staff.
