Meet the Support Organisation: the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)

The NHS Innovation Service brings together 12 world-class expert support organisations, working in partnership to help innovators navigate the health and care system, speeding up access to support.

In our Meet the Support Organisation series, we’ll meet the people and teams who are part of the service, helping to turn great ideas into real-world impact.

Each profile introduces one of our partner organisations - exploring who they are, how they support innovation, and their advice for anyone looking to make a difference through the NHS.

Like our partners across the Innovation Service, we support innovators in navigating clinical governance, regulation, evidence generation and NHS adoption pathways. Our concierge-style support is tailored to the needs of global pharma, biotech and healthtech companies alike, ensuring innovators can access the right expertise, infrastructure and delivery support at the right time.

2. What is your role in supporting health innovation?

Innovators are central to the future of both NHS care and the UK life sciences economy. Without innovation, we cannot improve patient outcomes at scale or maintain the UK’s global competitiveness in life sciences.

The NIHR Industry Hub is designed as the national operating model for commercial clinical research delivery in England — built around speed, predictability and performance.

We help innovators evaluate products and technologies, generate robust clinical and health economic evidence, and navigate the pathway from early development through to NHS adoption. Whether supporting translational science, experimental medicine, early-phase trials or large-scale late-phase studies, our role is to create a coordinated, delivery-focused research environment that enables innovation to succeed.

3. How do you help innovators navigate the NHS and bring their ideas to life?

We recognise that innovation often slows not because the science is weak, but because health systems can be difficult to navigate. Our role is to reduce that complexity.

Through the NHS Innovation Service, we assess each innovator’s stage of development and provide structured, end-to-end support designed around their specific needs. We actively manage performance across the research pathway so innovators experience a coordinated national delivery system rather than fragmented local processes.

For biotech companies, this may include access to leading clinical experts, support refining protocol design, feasibility planning aligned to genuine delivery capacity, and strategic advice to de-risk execution.

For HealthTech SMEs, we provide structured evaluation pathways including testing in real clinical environments, generation of real-world evidence, and support for NHS adoption and scale-up

You can find more information about this structured support on the NIHR Support for Industry webpages.

4. Can you share an example of a successful innovation you’ve supported via the NHS Innovation Service?

A great example of our partnership in action is our support for C2N Diagnostics. They developed the PrecivityAD2™ blood test, an emerging biomarker technology aimed at improving the early and accurate diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

Once an innovator like C2N achieves UKCA/MHRA medical device registration, navigating the complex pathways to NHS evaluation and adoption requires tailored guidance.

Through the NHS Innovation Service, the NIHR stepped in to help them navigate this broader landscape and connect with world-class clinical experts. With our support, C2N successfully engaged NICE stakeholders to shape the potential evaluation of their test, and we have already begun exploring future collaborations on other emerging biomarker technologies. You can read more about how we support companies like C2N on our support for healthtech innovation webpage.

5. What’s your one piece of advice for innovators looking to work with the NHS?

Engage early to reduce downstream risk.

The NHS is a complex system, but innovators do not need to navigate it alone. By engaging with the NHS Innovation Service and the NIHR upstream, companies can access coordinated support through a single interface — helping define patient populations, strengthen study design, align with real-world delivery capability, and avoid avoidable delays later in development.

The earlier we work together, the faster we can bring innovation to patients.

Find out more about how the NIHR supports innovators through the service.