We welcome the commitment in the Government's 10 Year Health Plan for England to making innovation a key driver for NHS reform, and the formal recognition of the critical work of the 15 local health innovation networks in supporting this vision:

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

Innovation and technology offer huge potential to tackle the challenges facing our health and care system, enabling a healthier population, enhancing workforce productivity, reducing pressure on the NHS and strengthening the UK’s position as a global leader in life sciences.

To support this vision the Plan focuses on themes including rapid expansion of AI, further developing the NHS App, a single patient record, and moving to Neighbourhood Health Services to enable continuous, accessible, integrated care from hospital to community.

These advances will involve innovation partnerships to deliver change to local services, and we are looking forward to helping operationalise these plans; working with partners to find, test and implement innovations that improve patient outcomes, increase NHS productivity and reduce waiting lists, while delivering economic growth. 

Our Health Innovation East Midlands’ priorities align to the ‘three shifts for the NHS’ and we are committed to supporting the Plan’s vision for innovation to deliver a healthier, more productive population and economy, including:

• Population health – reducing chronic disease and enhancing health-related quality of life.
• Boosting workforce productivity – reducing sickness related absenteeism and realising the economic value of health.
• Reducing NHS pressures – including hospital admissions, urgent care attendances, elective waits, length of stay, timely discharge, and referral-to-treatment times.
• Economic impact and growth – creating jobs and attracting investment. 

Place-based innovation leadership

For innovation to thrive in a rapidly changing NHS landscape, the Plan’s focus on the implementation of new ideas, technologies and medicines must be supported through a collaborative effort that requires shared accountability and action at all levels.

Our role within our national Health Innovation Network – alongside our embedded role supporting local NHS and care organisations – provides a step-change opportunity to deliver the ‘three shifts’ and support delivery of the 10-Year-Plan; translating research and technological advances into real-world impact, ensuring innovation reaches patients and frontline services efficiently.

We have more than a decade of experience across the East Midlands at embedding innovation; partnering with health, research and academic partners, care teams and commercial innovators to deliver change in the NHS and drive economic growth.

Building on our established research and innovation structures, we can accelerate the

discovery of new innovations, speed up the adoption of new treatments, improve service delivery, and unlock long-term economic benefits.

How we will support delivery of the 10-Year-Plan ambitions

Over the past year our work has had a transformational impact.  This includes benefiting more than 260,000 patients, enabling millions of pounds of NHS efficiencies, and releasing over 37,000 hours of clinical capacity.

Our contribution to economic growth during 2024 to 2025 has created or safeguarded dozens of jobs, supported commercial innovators to develop, commercialise or scale 397 technologies, and has leveraged £28.8 million investment for the economy.

In total, our value to the health and care system during the year is estimated at £53.8 million, delivered against £4.93 million funding.

Our 2024 – 2025 Impact Report provides more examples of this positive contribution; supporting the three shifts through enabling more efficient, productive, and effective health and care services.

Building on these impacts – and working with our national, regional and local partners across all sectors – we are committed to supporting the ambitions of the 10-Year-Plan:

• Enabling local implementation of national priority health innovation programmes, identified in collaboration with the NHS, Department of Health and Social Care, and other partners.

• Working with research, NHS and care partners implement solutions to local health challenges – identifying opportunities for innovative technologies to enable transformation across clinical pathways.

• Seeking, testing, and implementing AI solutions within East Midlands health and care organisations – for example, currently we are evaluating technologies ranging from medical scribes that reduce the clinical administrative burden, to translation tools with potential to save money and speed up patient access to information.

• Supporting the development of local health innovation hubs that enable a place-based approach to innovation collaboration.

• Working with commercial innovators – from SMEs to global industries – and closer partnering with research and academic organisations, to maintain a pipeline of new innovations, and ensure that new products align to identified local needs.

• Supporting health and care organisations to build workforce expertise and capacity on innovation adoption and spread, and in so doing help increase morale and productivity.

• Always placing patients at the heart of our work; building solutions around them through co-design of innovations.