Nine NHS organisations to partner on Clinical Entrepreneur Programme

Nine NHS organisations have been selected as partners to join the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme.

Founded in 2016, the programme aims to nurture healthcare innovators from across the country and help them gain the commercial skills, knowledge and experience to make their ideas become a reality.

Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is leading the programme and has selected a coalition of more than 60 cross-sector partners including NHS hospitals, multinational companies, research charities, and innovation and business support networks, to deliver the programme and create economic growth in the life science sector. (A full list of those involved can be found below)

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the trusts which has been selected.

Chris Chaney, Chief Executive of CW+, co-lead of the Trust’s CW Innovation programme said: “We are delighted to be a partner with the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme and deliver on our shared vision to transform patient care and experience, as well as support our staff to innovate and bring new ideas to fruition. Our CW Innovation programme – jointly led by the Trust and its charity, CW+ – fast-tracks new technologies and innovations that address the most urgent and fundamental challenges faced by healthcare organisations today.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has catalysed an acceleration in innovation and research and we have advanced at pace to introduce a range of innovations into the day-to-day running of our hospitals. Our collaboration with ARU and the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme represents another exciting milestone for CW Innovation’s expanding portfolio of ‘test and scale’ partnerships that include digital healthcare, AI and machine learning, and remote patient-centred care.”

The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme network will provide opportunities for internships, access to NHS test and evaluation sites, academic and commercial facilities in Europe, America, Africa and Australia, access to funding and knowledge exchange and connection to customers.

In the first four years of the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, over 500 clinical entrepreneurs were recruited. Between them, 247 life science start-up companies have been created, over £270million of funding has been raised through investment largely from the private sector, and more than 30 million patients and users have benefited from the innovations.

Examples of innovations through the programme include smartphone otoscopes to look inside the ear, and drones designed to carry medical supplies between NHS sites.

Professor Tony Young, national clinical lead for innovation at NHS England and director of medical innovation at ARU, added: “The NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme is one of the largest innovation projects in the world allowing patients to be treated with the latest technology.

“It is fantastic that the NHS is able to strengthen its partnership with the life science industry through this programme and create one of the largest life science park networks in Europe, building on the excellent work of creating the biggest vaccination programme in health service history during the pandemic.”