Inside HealthTech Research: One year on
Hello and a warm welcome to my first blog as the Director of the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre (HRC) in Emergency and Acute Care. April 2025 marked one year since the launch of our new HRC, hosted by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT). It has been a busy year, and I am pleased to share a brief reflection on what we have achieved and what’s ahead.
Our Vision and Focus
The NIHR established HRCs to accelerate the development of healthcare technologies to improve the effectiveness and quality of health care services.
Our focus is on transforming emergency and acute care by supporting the development and adoption of new technologies to detect, diagnose and monitor disease, embedding innovative improvements into routine care.
Over the next 5 years we aim to:
- Co-develop HealthTech through patient, public, clinical, academic and industry collaboration that will bridge the gap between care settings
- Support the HealthTech industry by providing a commercialisation infrastructure to develop technologies into practical solutions fit for deployment into the NHS
- Increase capacity and capability in HealthTech development by training innovators from across the sector
- Build a community of experts to generate evidence for healthcare innovations.
Laying the Foundations
2024 was focused on building the right team, structure and strategy. We have established governance, recruited a multidisciplinary core team and developed strong working relationships across the clinical, commercial and academic networks.
I would like to share a personal thank you to Professor Jane Eddleston (former Joint Chief Medical Officer at MFT), whose guidance and invaluable contributions have been instrumental in shaping our HRC during its first year.
Following Jane’s retirement, we were pleased to welcome Dr Sohail Munshi, Joint Chief Medical Officer at MFT, as replacement Chair of the Governance Board. Sohail brings a wealth of experience, and his clinical expertise as a GP and in the delivery of community services, as well as a National adviser on health Inequalities and this will be invaluable as we continue to strengthen partnerships across health and social care.
Another major focus of the past year has been the recruitment of our Core HRC Team which include specialists in programme delivery, trials, communications and patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE). You can meet the team on meet the team on our website.
In June 2024, we officially launched the HRC, with an event bringing together commercial partners, NHS clinicians and innovators. We were honoured to welcome Lord James O’Shaughnessy, former Health Minister and Senior Partner at Newmarket Strategy, whose keynote speech highlighted the vital role of HealthTech innovation and the importance of collaboration with commercial partners. The event provided a valuable opportunity to engage with stakeholders, share our mission, and lay the foundation for meaningful partnerships that will drive future innovation.
(L-R) Lord James O'Shaughnessy, Dr Annie Yarwood (HRC Operations Lead), Professor Tim Felton (HRC Director), Kathy Cowell OBE DL (MFT Chairman), Professor Jane Eddleston (former Group Joint chief medical officer at MFT) and Mark Cubbon (Group Chief Executive at MFT).
Since then, we’ve contributed to key events including:
‘Innovation at MFT’, HLTH Europe, ‘Getting Your Product Adopted in the NHS’, and Pro-Manchester’s HealthTech Conference. These opportunities have helped raise awareness of our work and build new collaborations across the ecosystem.
Our priorities and projects
The HRC in Emergency and Acute Care is strongly committed to driving progress in the three shifts announced as part of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan:
- Moving care from hospital to community care
- Transitioning from treating sickness to prevention
- Moving from analogue to digital
Our HRC’s focus on emergency and acute care aligns closely with these priorities and highlights the critical areas where innovation is most needed throughout four themes:
- Theme 1: Community care, primary care, ambulatory care and A&E departments as the interface between primary and secondary care
- Theme 2: Secondary care
- Theme 3: Understanding the problem
- Theme 4: Evaluating the solution
Several exciting projects are underway within these themes, including Professor Rick Body’s research on troponin testing in ambulances. This work specifically aligns with the aim of moving care from the hospital to the community by reducing unnecessary hospital admissions for suspected heart attacks by improving rapid diagnostic pathways. This work specifically aligns with the aim of moving care from the hospital to the community by reducing unnecessary hospital admissions for suspected heart attacks by improving rapid diagnostic pathways.
In our secondary care theme, Dr Gareth Kitchen is leading the national PROTECT Airways trial, which will compare the use of advanced airway protection systems in patients who are on ventilators in Intensive Care Units (ICU), with the aim of reducing time on a ventilator by reducing ventilator associated pneumonia infections which can affect 30% of these patients. Preventing pneumonia in these patients would reduce death, improve outcomes and reduce the length that people need to be ventilated and stay in ICU.
In November 2024, we officially launched the VALIDATE Programme of Research. This innovative programme streamlines the evaluation of In Vitro Diagnostics (IVDs), providing a seamless process for testing using clinical samples across specialities. Our first project under the VALIDATE umbrella is due to begin in November. If you are interested in finding out more about the VALIDATE Programme of Research, please contact us.
We are also proud to have successfully completed our first two projects with two SMEs, Eluceda and Proxximos, exploring the use of novel technologies for infection prevention and supporting evidence generation for their technologies. These collaborations have helped refine our approach to working with industry and have allowed both companies to successfully test their technologies in clinical environments and gather valuable data and user experiences which will inform future clinical studies and use of these devices. We continue to support both Eluceda and Proxximos and we are exploring further funding opportunities.
Supporting the HealthTech industry
In our first year we have established a prioritisation process which means that every company who fills in our innovation assessment form will receive a feedback report from a panel of experts, providing advice on next steps for the company in order to take their innovation forward and how the HRC could support them to do this. To get in touch please email HRC-Emergency@mft.nhs.uk or fill in the enquiry form on our website. We have already taken 19 companies through this process and provided them with reports and we are working with 9 of these companies to develop collaborative projects to generate the evidence they need.
Inclusive Research
Underpinning all that we do are the crosscutting themes of inclusivity, PPIE and capacity building.
Inclusivity is at the heart of everything we do. We’ve published our Inclusive Research Strategy, outlining plans to ensure equitable access to HealthTech. We’re asking fundamental questions: Who accesses emergency care? Why? Where can technology have the biggest impact in their care journey?
We’re also working with the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre to improve inclusivity in commercial trials—addressing a key recommendation in the O’Shaughnessy Review.
Capacity building
To strengthen HealthTech research capability, we’ve recruited three Research Fellows at The University of Manchester, specialising in health economics and data science. Their work will support robust evaluation of new technologies.
We’ve also launched a training webinar series, starting with HealthTech regulation. These sessions are open to anyone—please let us know what topics you’d like to see covered.
PPIE (Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement)
Our PPIE Strategy sets out how we’ll embed patient and public insight across all projects. We’ve recruited for a PPIE External Advisory Board and launched a PPIE Network. We’re thrilled that Rachel Corry, public contributor to the PALOH project, has joined as Co-Chair to help lead this vital initiative. Public involvement is crucial for ensuring that our research and projects are rooted in real-world needs and perspectives, and we’re excited about the future of embedding PPIE throughout the HRC.
Our Involvement and Engagement Specialist, Daniel Taylor, is currently leading scoping work with public and industry partners to understand the barriers to effective engagement and how we can overcome them.
You can read more in our recent blog: What the HRC can do for you.
Looking Ahead
As I reflect on our first year as a HRC, I look forward to the ambitions we have for the future.
We were pleased to see the strong focus on innovation and health technology in the Government’s new 10-Year Plan for the NHS. The emphasis on areas such as AI, data, diagnostics, and new models of care aligns closely with our mission to accelerate the development and adoption of impactful technologies. As a HRC, we’re committed to supporting this transformation
We will continue to support companies to generate high-quality evidence that accelerates their route to adoption. Working with our fellow NIHR HRCs across England and with the NIHR HRC co-ordinating Network, we aim to improve the way that HealthTech is approved and appraised by NICE, streamlining the route to adoption. To do this we are developing novel trial designs and evidence frameworks for HealthTech which allow us to demonstrate safety, efficacy and utility in a quicker and more efficient way which is tailored to HealthTech and not based on traditional clinical trials of medicines
We’ll also host more events, strengthen our training offer, and continue implementing our inclusive research and capacity-building strategies. As we grow, our focus remains clear: collaborative, evidence-based innovation that improves outcomes for patients and supports a sustainable NHS.
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Thank you for being part of our journey so far. I am excited to share more successes and transformative research updates with you as we progress through the next four years.
Professor Tim Felton, Director, NIHR HRC in Emergency and Acute Care
This blog launches our new ‘Inside HealthTech Research’ series, providing insight into areas of research within the HRC in Emergency and Acute Care.
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