About SBRI Healthcare
The Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Healthcare is a national award-winning programme. It accelerates innovative technologies in the NHS and the wider health and social care system, tackling unmet health and care needs.
SBRI Healthcare provides funding and support to early-stage projects enabling testing for business feasibility and technology development as well as to more mature products by supporting real world implementation studies.
The Programme is funded by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) which brings together industry, government, regulators, patients and the NHS, and is supported by the Health Innovation Network.
The Programme supports the NHS Long Term Plan goals including funding, staffing, reducing inequalities and alleviating the pressures from a growing and ageing population. It signals the challenges that the NHS and the wider system face in achieving these goals and invites outstanding entrepreneurs to put forward breakthrough innovations that can deliver improved outcomes of care.
Individual competition themes are scoped by working in close collaboration with frontline NHS and social care staff, and the Health Innovation Network. Through the funding and support from its networks, the Programme:
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Improves patient care
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Increases NHS efficiencies
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Enables the NHS to access new innovations that solve identified health and care challenges and unmet needs
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Brings economic value and wealth creation opportunities to the UK economy.
It is SBRI Healthcare's commitment to further leverage the Programme’s reputation for developing and scaling innovations at pace into the NHS, the social care system and the wider market. SBRI Healthcare aspires to unblock the barriers that hamper entrepreneurs’ ability to accelerate innovations into clinical practice, staying instrumental to achieving NHS England goals as well as Governmental objectives (such as the Life Sciences Vision), and continuing to create synergies across funders and the wider innovation ecosystem to facilitate innovators’ journeys.
To date SBRI Healthcare has supported over 306 innovations with £140 million+ of funding, generated 280+ patents, leveraged over £680 millions of private investment, created and retained 2235+ jobs and improved the outcomes of millions of patients.
Programme Management Office (PMO)
Since 1 April 2019, the SBRI Healthcare Programme has been managed by the Innovations Team within the Grant Management Group (GMG) at LGC Group. A Programme Management Office (PMO) was set up for SBRI Healthcare and its long-term sustainability invested in through integration with other programmes managed by the Innovations Team, including the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Health and Care Award, (run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR)), the NHS Cancer Programme Innovation Open Call, and the NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) programme.
GMG's extensive national networks guarantee pull from a diverse range of applicants, enable access to NHS specialisms, and open up opportunities to embed the programme further into the UK entrepreneurial ecosystem and national procurement.
The Innovations Team is headed by Ben Patient as Director and composed of qualified scientists, with approximately 90% attaining Master or PhD level and 20% holding an MBA. Scientific backgrounds include pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, molecular biology, in vitro diagnostics and medical devices. The team is supported by a specialised IP and Commercial team with 60+ years of experience in tech transfer.