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Impact Report2025-2026

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Local change, national impact

We are health innovation adoption experts. We work across the East Midlands and nationally as part of the Health Innovation Network, driving innovation within the NHS.

As one of 15 local Health Innovation Networks (HINs) covering England, we help health and social care teams to find, test, and implement solutions at scale to the NHS’s most pressing challenges.

Our positive impact rests in our ability to bring people, resources and organisations together to deliver benefits that could not be achieved alone.

We work across NHS and care organisations, we collaborate with research partners, and we support the growth of the life science industry by building cross sector partnerships that tackle health priorities and generate economic growth.

The East Midlands is home to a diverse population, and we act as catalysts to create the conditions for transformative change within the communities we serve.

We have over a decade of experience of enabling successful innovation adoption, and many of our projects have been implemented beyond the East Midlands, benefiting patients around the country. Since we were established in 2013, we estimate that more than 1.75 million people have been positively impacted through our work.

This contribution is enabled by our committed and passionate team members, and we work flexibly to ensure we align with the biggest health challenges facing our NHS, focusing on the three ‘shifts’ identified by the Government as key to the future of the NHS.

Foreword

Welcome to Health Innovation East Midlands' (HIEM) annual Impact Report for 2025-2026. We hope you enjoy reading about some of the highlights of our work with our partners over the last year.

There has been a lot of change within the health and care service landscape recently, and the direction and strategy has been set out with the publication of the NHS 10-year Plan and the Life Sciences Sector Plan (LSSP).

The local Health Innovation Networks are recognised in these key documents, and in the LSSP; Year one update for their roles in supporting transformation across health and care. Driving positive change across the NHS to meet ever increasing demand through better use of digital technology, AI and new pathways and medicines.

The health systems we are working with are under great pressure – but it is under these circumstances that transformation can flourish.

This report highlights just some of the many examples of how East Midlands health and care teams are introducing and embracing new ways to improve patient safety, patient experience and outcomes, whilst enabling more productive and efficient use of resources.

We are working within the two new East Midlands Integrated Care Board clusters to understand their challenges and the opportunities that are available to deliver care differently to our diverse populations.

For more than 13 years, our unique local role in driving uptake of innovative technologies and transformative approaches locally, regionally and nationally, has increased and expanded.

Over the course of the next year and beyond we are looking forward to aligning ever more closely with the needs of our health systems; supporting them to deliver an approach that will truly benefit communities.

Nicole McGlennon

– Managing Director,
Health Innovation East Midlands

Professor Phil Baker

– Independent Chair,
Health Innovation East Midlands

This report is presented under the
government’s three shifts for the NHS

Shift: from analogue
to digital

Shift: from sickness
to prevention

Shift: from hospital
to community

Our year in impacts
2025-2026*

Our value to the health and care system achieved against funding of £5.4M.

Patients positively impacted through our work.

clinical NHS appointments saved through our innovations.

of NHS clinical time saved through our innovations.

to develop, commercialise or scale innovations.

through our optimisation work to enable safer maternal and neonatal care.

to NHS and care organisations via our national pipeline.

by reducing the risk babies are born with cerebral palsy.

at our events and communities of practice.

across all England’s 15 local HINs for our national economy.

Enabling economic
growth and productivity

Improving health and generating wealth

We bridge the gap between the NHS and health innovators. We not only improve patient outcomes and increase NHS efficiency, we also stimulate economic growth.

Each year, we attract millions of pounds in investment by helping innovators reach new markets, enabling them to expand their businesses and establish or secure jobs.

In addition, our innovations contribute to the health of our economy by helping keep people well and in work.

“Our 15 Health Innovation
Networks do important work;
we will continue to fund
and support them.”

Fit for the Future.
10 Year health Plan
for England

“Action 24: Empower the Health Innovation
Network to drive innovation and investment
at scale by strengthening support. The Network
will continue to foster partnerships with innovators
and the health system in developing, testing,
commercialising, and scaling solutions to the
NHS’s most pressing challenges-building on
the £2.6 billion already leveraged by the
network to date, creating jobs and supporting
innovative companies to grow and scale,
while driving improvements in patient
outcomes and experience.”

Life Sciences Sector Plan

Across all England’s 15 local HINs

2025 - 2026

Jobs safeguarded

Jobs created

Investment secured

Shift:
from from analogue
to digital

Enabling the adoption of digital technology
to drive efficiencies and productivity.

Support for innovators

Grow Digital Health Midlands

Working in collaboration with Health Innovation West Midlands we launched Grow Digital Health Midlands during 2025, an ambitious new programme designed to support UK technology companies in developing and scaling high-potential digital health innovations within the NHS and care sector.

Read more about Grow Digital Health Midlands

Grow Digital Health Midlands 2025 impacts:

8 companies supported

54 connections brokered into the healthcare system across the Midlands

6 deployments into local health and care systems directly supported

25 jobs created or safeguarded

£1.2M revenue secured

Embracing digital technology to support neurodiversity services

We explored how digital tools can help address current system challenges in the adult ADHD pathway, such as delays in assessment, limited self-management support, and variation in local services.

Read more about Digital Adult ADHD solutions

We developed: An online portal to help health colleagues search relevant digital innovations that help neurodiverse people and the services that support them.

Digital for Neurodiversity Hubs involving people with lived experience, practitioners, researchers and innovators to share their experiences and ideas for digital innovation.

An evidence review of research on the use of digital self-management tools for people with ADHD.

Human Factors personas that represent people with ADHD and the common experiences they share, to facilitate service improvement work.

Innovator stories

  • Heidi Health: Reducing administration time in primary care
  • Rapid Health: Automating triage and appointment booking
  • Holly Health: Sustained use of habit changing app suggests high patient appetite to enhance care at home
  • Tellmi: Evaluating digital mental health support
Read more about our Innovator stories

Shift:
from sickness
to prevention

Helping people to live happier and
healthier lives, reducing the demand for
– and delays in – treatment and care.

Our stories

Safer care in maternity and neonatal services

We work with maternity and neonatal units across the East Midlands to improve safety for mothers and birthing people during pregnancy, and ensure preterm babies get the best start in life, by delivering evidence-based care at the right time.

Read more about our ongoing projects

1,193 women giving birth at less than 30 weeks received magnesium sulphate within 24 hours before birth. This meant up to 32 babies will not develop cerebral palsy, transforming the lives of the children and avoiding lifetime care costs of up to £32M.

633 women in preterm labour at less than 34 weeks received antibiotics to reduce the risk of the baby developing early onset neonatal Group B Streptococcal infection, which can lead to severe and dangerous infections including sepsis and meningitis. This potentially means up to 63 babies in the East Midlands were born without Group B strep.

Up to 21 babies’ lives were saved thanks to mothers receiving antenatal corticosteroids – medication for women between 24 and 34 weeks of gestation where there is a risk of preterm birth – which helps lung development in the foetus, reducing the risk of breathing problems and other complications in newborns.

Up to 93 babies born at less than 34 weeks gestational age survived because their umbilical cord was clamped at, or after one minute after birth.

18 staff trained in Culture Coach skills in 2025-2026 which supports clinical teams to build a culture of safety and improvement, bolstered by the development of a Culture Toolkit to support trusts with embedding learning.

Helping health checks become easier to access

SISU Health helps people access comprehensive health checks around the country in places that are convenient, including workplaces, shopping areas and leisure facilities – supporting major NHS and government priorities such as cardiovascular disease detection and prevention.

Read more about SISU Health

The SISU machine in Boots in Nottingham city centre, between 9 December 2025 and 11 May 2026, has delivered 3,474 health checks:

15.4% of users recorded high blood pressure

777 health checks triggered a ‘call to action’, recommending pharmacist or GP intervention

620 users agreed to be referred to specialist lifestyle services including weight management, physical activity and smoking cessation

Shift:
from hospital
to community

Providing better care close to
or in people’s own homes

Our stories

Delivering specialist kidney care at scale in partnership with primary care

In the UK, over 3m people live with the most severe stages of kidney disease and this is rising rapidly. People with kidney disease face increased risk of heart attack or stroke. The total annual economic burden of kidney disease in the UK is £7.0 billion, with £6.4 billion being direct costs to the NHS – about 3.2% of NHS budgets. (ref: Kidney Research UK Health Economics Report)

Read more about specialist kidney care

HIEM funded the independent evaluation of the LUCID pilot service (published in June 2024).

Estimated £2.76 savings for every £1 spent.

Better access to advice and services about CKD in GP practices.

Estimated reduction in dialysis and kidney transplants

£450,000 estimated saving per year, within the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland health system.

The pilot was sustained post-evaluation, and further impacts (up to 29 May 2025) have been seen:

Identified and supported an additional 1,828 people.

Almost half the patients had changes to their medicines.

296 (10.5%) patients were referred more quickly to hospital. 228 (8.1%) avoided needing a hospital visit.

Education tools and more effective partnering is helping to upskill staff.

A digital self management programme - My Kidneys & Me

Safer care – across
all three national shifts

Our Patient Safety Collaborative works across East Midlands health and care organisations, supporting them to embed safer care, putting patients at the heart of services and saving dozens of lives.

Our work during the year focused on a range of clinical themes including maternal and neonatal care (above), medicines safety and mental health – and we also helped health organisations to embed the national Martha’s Rule initiative.

Medicines safety: Helping people with a learning disability, at risk of behaviour that challenges, to avoid harm from psychotropic medicines.

There are approximately 1.3 million people with a learning disability in England. People in this population are significantly more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medicines (compared to the general population) to manage behaviour that challenges, often without a mental health diagnosis.

Behaviour that challenges is not a clinical indication but can signal where a person’s needs are not being met. While psychotropic medicines can be beneficial for conditions such as psychosis, depression, anxiety, and epilepsy, they also carry risks of side effects and reduced quality of life.

Jointly with Health Innovation West Midlands, HIEM are the national leads for the programme supporting all 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives in England – and are also locally working with Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB and Northamptonshire ICB.

Impacts

Collaborating with NHS England, we delivered:

Data, measurement and insight that created the first national psychotropic outcome measures of their kind.

Five successful national Action and Learning Collaborative webinars.

An Innovation Exchange event to showcase 10 innovations to 260 attendees.

Support for 22 Integrated Care Systems (ICS) to develop action plans, ready to deliver in 2026-2027.

There are early signs of measurable impact; by March 2026, analysis across 1,335 GP practices nationally demonstrated 34 incidences of severe harm avoided, associated with 102 fewer people being prescribed an antipsychotic for at least three months than would have been expected if baseline prescribing rates had continued.

Nationally we are supporting 22 Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) to undertake a whole system approach

  • Developing a shared understanding of local provision across health, social care and the voluntary sector.
  • Identifying gaps, variation and opportunities for improvement.
  • Co-producing a system action plan using Quality Improvement methodology, delivered at neighbourhood level.
  • Using data that matters to measure improvement.

This approach aims to improve proactive care planning and prevention to avoid psychotropic prescribing and to reduce and stop prescribing as soon as appropriate. This change will help to reduce harm and improve quality of life.

“The Health Innovation East Midlands and West
Midlands teams’ professionalism, commitment and
compassionate focus in their role as co-lead Patient
Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) have made a real impact
to the delivery of our current MedSIP initiative and
I’m grateful for their dedicated support throughout.
They have provided highly valued coordination of the
15 Health Innovation Network PSCs, been impactful
problem solvers and champions of collaborative and
person centred approaches. Thanks to their leadership
and determination we are better equipped to collate
metrics that matter in support of improvement.
It has been a privilege to work with such
a dedicated and knowledgeable team.”

Ruth Dales, Senior Improvement Manager
Medicines Safety, NHS England

Managing Deterioration: Implementing Martha’s Rule

Together with Health Innovation West Midlands (HIWM) we have taken a coordinated Midlands-wide approach to the implementation of Martha’s Rule - a major patient safety initiative for inpatient hospital care, providing patients and families with a way to seek an urgent review if their or their loved one’s condition deteriorates, and they are concerned this is not being responded to.

There are three components to Martha’s Rule:

  1. Patients will be asked, at least daily, about how they are feeling, and if they are getting better or worse, and this information will be acted on in a structured way.
  2. All staff will be able, at any time, to ask for a review from a different team if they are concerned that a patient is deteriorating, and they are not being responded to.
  3. This escalation route will also always be available to patients themselves, their families and carers and advertised across the hospital.

HIEM and HIWM facilitate a monthly Community of Practice (CoP) for staff to share and learn from each other – whatever stage of implementation they may be at.

Working in partnership with HIWM, we are also leading the national pilot to test and understand how Martha’s Rule can be spread into Community Hospital settings.

A new approach to responding to patient safety incidents

The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents, for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety.

The year-long programme jointly led by Health Innovation West Midlands and Health Innovation East Midlands supported ICBs to deliver their role set out in the framework.

Working across stakeholders, we:

  1. Refreshed draft PSIRF Oversight Roles and Responsibilities Specification (NHS England guidance)
  2. Delivered three national programme update webinars (avg. 105 attendees; usefulness rating 4.1/5).
  3. Developed PSIRF governance and shared learning infrastructure process map.
  4. Created case studies and shared learning.

“Phenomenal work and approach
taken to support implementation
of Martha’s Rule.”

Heather Pritchard, Head of
Martha’s Rule and Patient Safety Improvement Programmes,
NHS England

Impacts

During 2025-2026, 570 calls were made to Martha’s Rule across the East Midlands. Of these, 118 calls led to a clinical review and 62% of these led to a change in treatment.

We:

Supported introduction of Martha’s Rule across 13 hospitals in the East Midlands

Held a face-to-face Midlands- wide event for more than 100 staff to share and learn from each other and hear about next steps for the programme.

Delivered tailored implementation support, Communities of Practice and regional working groups to share knowledge, skills and best practice.

More about the Managing Deterioration Safety Improvement Programme

Spreading innovation

We tackle national problems with local understanding and tackle local problems by capitalising on the depth of our knowledge and experience.

Our work is based on understanding healthcare needs and priorities across the East Midlands.

We spread successful innovation across health systems within the East Midlands and beyond.

Innovation scanning and Innovation Exchange (IE) events

We held four IE events in 2025-2026 that gave health and care providers and commissioners across the East Midlands and beyond the opportunity to hear about ready-to-implement solutions to set challenges.

Each event has focussed on a different topic including:

For each event we aim to present examples of innovations with the potential to address the challenges specified.

Some events are linked to an Enabling Fund that health and care systems can apply for to help them to introduce innovations that specifically address the specific challenges presented.

Innovation Exchange activities in 2025-2026 brought 78 innovations to the attention of our health and care system colleagues.

Innovation Scanning

We find proven solutions to local health challenges by scanning the national Health Innovation Network pipeline – a searchable database comprising more than 1,600 of ready-to-implement technologies and pathway transformations across all clinical themes.

We can also identify proven solutions via many other sources, including national innovator programmes including the NHS Innovation Accelerator.

During the year we supported East Midlands health and care organisations with a number of innovations scans on themes from musculoskeletal conditions to NHS estates and facilities.

Our support services

Since we were established in 2013, we have developed fantastic skills, knowledge, and experience around how to implement – and sustain – transformative change and improvement.

Our expertise is available to all our partners across health and care, industry, and academic / research organisations – this section spotlights a couple of our expert services (health analytics and evaluation and patient and public involvement) so please get in touch to discuss how we can support you – our contact information is at the end of this report.

Our services include

Igniting innovation

Service transformation

  • Finding innovative solutions to your specific challenges
  • Access proven innovations
  • Service pathway mapping and redesign
  • Project management
  • Medicines management
  • Patient and Public Involvement
  • Health inequalities / Core 20+5
  • Communities of practice
  • Cross system facilitation and brokering

Data, analytics and evaluation

Insight & evidence

  • Real-world evidence
  • Evaluation
  • Data analysis & presentation
  • Business Case development
  • Benefits realisation
  • Budget impact model
  • Cost / benefit calculators
  • Health economics
  • Process mapping
  • Secure analysis of sensitive data

Organisational development

Building your team

  • Quality improvement
  • Change management
  • Human factors
  • Embed and sustain transformation
  • Safety culture
  • Appreciative inquiry
  • Organisational training and events
  • Workforce transformation
  • Clinical entrepreneurship
  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Improvement mentoring and coaching

Analytics and evaluation support

Analytics and Evaluation is just one example of the support we provide.

Our team of experts turns data into insight to support decision making, whether planning to introduce a new innovation or evaluating an existing one.

Our work helps inform health organisations about what works, what doesn’t, and how things can be improved, to enable them to make confident, evidence informed choices that lead to meaningful, measurable impact.

In 2025-2026 we:

  • Evaluated a heart failure rapid titration service, with hospital staff supporting patients at home with remote monitoring to achieve the optimal drug therapy much more quickly than can be delivered by the standard approach.
  • Delivered an evidence review to understand the existing evidence for digital tools for the self-management of ADHD in adults.

Ongoing evaluations include:

  • The use of AI in the prioritisation of and as a clinical decision support tool for chest x-rays.
  • A real-world evaluation exploring an app that provides support for job seekers who are struggling with their mental health. This will include interviewing the Job Centre staff who are signposting to the app.

Looking ahead

We are commencing the real-world evaluation of an innovation transforming the care of children and young people with tics, a three-year project delivered with a local university that will provide remote psycho education and behavioural therapy.

We are also the evaluation partners for a number of funding bids with local healthcare organisations and universities.

Find out more about our analytics and evaluation support

Involving patients
and embedding
equity in our work

We are committed to involving patients and members of the public in co-designing and producing new technologies and ways of working, and we strive to ensure our projects are underpinned by their input.

We aim to share best practice Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) information, resources and opportunities.

During the year, we supported 153 healthcare partners and 64 commercial innovators, providing advice to ensure patients’ and community voices were heard in health innovation and transformation.

Our support ranges from hosting webinars and sharing ‘how to’ guides, to our Public Face newsletter, a dedicated online PPI Resource Hub and access to our patient and patient leaders network and PPI Senate and Expert People’s Panel, whose members have experience of a range of health issues, conditions, and insights.

Alongside our work to involve patients, we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion; ensuring that innovation and transformation respond to the needs of our diverse populations.

During the year, we:

  • Reviewed all our projects to ensure our work focused on addressing, and not widening, inequalities.
  • Hosted webinars and produced guides on topics such as how to engage with Deaf people to achieve health equity.

“I am involved in several PPIE opportunities
across England. HIEM’s approach to
considering health equity is commendable
– the robust process in place means it’s
heartening to see that you really listen
and take on board our views”

Expert Peoples Panel member on
HIEMs Equality Analysis process.

Read more about our patient involvement work

Impacts:

Engaged more than 260 patients across multiple projects by organising workshops, focus groups, and surveys.

Regular participation of 45 patients and public representatives through meetings, events, selection panels and reviewing public facing resources.

Among others, feedback has informed:

  • the production of best practice principles when collecting and using public data.
  • a film for healthcare professionals on effective use of psychotropic medication.
  • co-designing and testing online support platforms for children and parents affected by Tourettes.
  • grant applications for research on the future of vaccinations.
  • future innovators webinars and resources producing devices for people with hand restriction.
  • involvement in the Midlands Grow innovator cohort selection panels.

Two HIEM case studies were selected for inclusion on the 2026 national HIN Patient Involvement Impact Report.

In the pipeline:
innovations on our horizon

A selection of high potential innovations on
our radar that align with the governments
shifts and cut across key clinical priorities.

This report provides a snapshot of just a few of our more than 100 East Midlands innovation projects and the innovators we are supporting through our Grow Digital Health programme. However, via the national pipeline across all 15 Health Innovation Networks, we can access over 1,600 innovations.

We can search this national resource to identify specific solutions against any local health challenge.

Listed below is a small selection of high-potential innovations within this national pipeline, that align with the three shifts.

To learn more about these solutions – or for support to seek other solutions against your priorities – get in touch, our contact details are on the back of this report.

Some examples of 2026-27 projects are below:

RehAtt® DiSTRO from Brain Stimulation

A digital solution for assessment of cognitive function, from acute to late phase. It contains several digitised cognitive tests.

We are supporting deployment at Nottingham University Hospitals and Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust to assess patients on the stroke pathway.

Shiftfrom analogue
to digital

Lyrebird Health

Integrated Ambient Voice Technology (AVT). AVT is a type of artificial intelligence that confidentially listens to and documents conversations between healthcare professionals and patients as they happen.

We are supporting deployment at Nottingham Children’s Hospital across acute paediatric outpatient clinics and the paediatric Emergency Department.

Shiftfrom analogue
to digital

RBF Fracture

AI driven, real-time, Radiobiotics solution to detect fractures.

We are supporting deployment by University Hospitals of Northamptonshire to enhance the safety, quality and efficiency of imaging pathways in their Emergency Departments.

Shiftfrom analogue
to digital

Focus ADHD

Focus ADHD is a local East Midlands programme that was adopted nationally by the health innovation networks in 2020. The three-year national programme has since completed, but the implementation of the technology has continued to accelerate, achieving outstanding impacts:

  • £90.4M estimated NHS savings.
  • 97,599 clinical appointments saved.
  • 200,332 hours of healthcare capacity released.
  • 263,000 patients have benefitted.
  • 84% of eligible NHS trusts have implemented and 2,646 NHS staff trained.

Contact us

Please get in touch to discuss your specific support needs – and to keep up to date with our latest offers, sign up to our newsletters and social media channels.

healthinnovation-em@nottingham.ac.uk

healthinnovation-em.org.uk

Health Innovation East Midlands

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