HealthTech Research Centres

Our HealthTech Research Centres (HRCs) are centres of excellence located in leading NHS organisations across England.

They accelerate the development of healthcare technologies to improve the effectiveness and quality of health and care services. They do this by helping medical device, digital technology and diagnostic companies (collectively known as healthtech) to develop, evaluate and validate new innovative health technologies to address pressing healthcare challenges. This includes help to generate evidence to demonstrate financial value (health economics) or improve operational efficiency in the NHS (real-world evidence generation).

We also help non-life science companies, such as software developers and digital companies, that are working on healthcare solutions.

HRC support for the life sciences industry

We have established 14 HRCs, each with a distinct therapeutic focus, to bring together the life sciences industry, patients, carers, the NHS, researchers, commissioners and investors. Through our HRCs, we can provide:

Expertise

Unrivalled access to world-leading medical diagnostics expertise and extensive clinical networks.

State-of-the-art facilities

Access to specialist equipment relevant to distinct specialisms, including a sleeping unit, a surgical theatre simulation suite, a gait analysis lab and a neuroimaging suite.

Advice

Advice on the suitability of new technologies and the evidence required to support their commercial uptake. This includes advice on device design, patient care pathway analysis, clinical evaluation, health economics, site identification, patient recruitment and regulatory advice.

Collaboration

Help to broker relationships between industry and clinical practice to test new technologies in community settings. We can help you to build a multidisciplinary team to work with you to ensure you generate the right evidence to support the adoption of your health technology into the NHS.

Patient and public involvement

Public contributors are at the centre of our HRCs, helping to steer and govern our work to ensure it is relevant to patients and carers. Each HRC has a PPIE lead to support companies in their product design, development and to facilitate patient engagement and recruitment.

Study delivery

In-house delivery of clinical trials, health economics, health informatics, multidisciplinary pathology capabilities, and generation of high quality evidence to demonstrate the benefits of your product.