Navigating the UK healthcare system (as a technology provider)

Over the last couple of years I’ve been learning a tiny amount about how to supply technology into the NHS at the very earliest stages.

Here are a few resources I’ve found useful.

Introductory guide to NHS finance. There’s a great 267 page PDF from Healthcare Financial Management Association. I was lucky enough to receive a cut-down version for SMEs. It covers how the NHS is funded, how procurement works, how value is measured.

NICE run events to help understand routes to market. You probably have to sign up to their mailing list to find out about them.

Funding is possible via NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research),  UKRI (UK Research and Innovation), Innovate UK. Worth signing up to events to learn more about how business is done.

Every trust has an academic partner, via what was called the Academic Health Science Network and is now the Health Innovation Network.

The government is supportive of growing UK companies in healthcare (subject to change, as all of the above is). There are pathways to learn about, and also IP considerations. I was surprised to find there’s a guide to effective NHS data partnerships, which seeks “to ensure that society receives a fair share of any benefits arising from a data partnership with an external organisation, including any financial returns.“

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As a final note, in one conversation or event, I first learned a very important aspect of UK healthcare: to a rough approximation, it doesn’t much matter how good your product is, you need to be cost neutral or cost saving to go anywhere.