In September, Health Innovation East Midlands (HIEM) launched an Innovation Fund focused on improving access to primary care, offering funding of up to £50,000 for healthcare organisations across the East Midlands to address barriers to innovation.

The NHS is determined to make it easier and quicker for patients to see their GP and other services within primary care. This is a top priority for the NHS and in May 2023 the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), published a two-year delivery plan for recovering access to primary care.

HIEM works to transform lives through innovation supporting health and social care teams to find, test and implement solutions to the NHS’ greatest challenges.

The funding opportunity supported:

• MedTech medical devices, for example, technologies to support diagnosis or monitoring that can improve patients’ care, treatment, and health ​

• Digital health technologies such as mobile apps and telemedicine platforms,  that help patients and / or health professionals to access and share information more easily. 

A competitive application process saw HIEM receive 43 expressions of interest, with 13 invited to submit full applications. The successful projects will be announced subject to contract in early 2025.

In November, HIEM launched a second Innovation Fund to support three specific challenges associated with NHS waiting lists.  With the focus, once again on MedTech and digital solutions, this fund invited expressions of interest aimed at improving the referral process, triaging referrals and helping patients to ‘wait well.’  The first application stage concluded in December with 45 expressions of interest received; successful applicants will be invited to make a full application by 17 January 2025.

This funding is part of HIEMs wider support available to all East Midlands NHS and care organisations.

Other support includes access to our existing portfolio of innovations ready for implementation, our ‘Innovation Scanning which can search for proven solutions to your challenge areas, and our Innovation Insights webinars.

For more information on our Innovation Fund opportunities or our wider support contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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