Supporting innovation to scale
The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) sits at the intersection of the NHS, the health innovation sector, and the organisations that fund and shape both.
The NIA identifies innovations that are already working in clinical care, workforce practice, and system delivery and works across the health and care landscape to help them reach the organisations, commissioners, and patients that need them most.
A programme built around the realities of NHS adoption
Funded by NHS England via the Accelerated Access Collaborative, and delivered by UCLPartners (UCLP), NIA Fellows come from clinical practice, industry, and research sharing an innovation already working in the NHS with the evidence, commercial traction, and organisational readiness to go further. The Fellowship provides three years of structured support to make that happen, drawing on a decade of experience.
Since 2015, the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) has helped scale over 100 evidence-based innovations across England, enhancing patient outcomes and service delivery.
Built into the innovation pathway
The NIA portfolio spans innovations impacting patients, clinicians and workforce.
Each innovation in the NIA portfolio has been selected for its evidence base, its commercial viability, and its readiness to spread. Over a decade, the work of getting those innovations adopted has settled into three consistent disciplines.
Access
Every innovation in the NIA portfolio is already in active use across the NHS. For clinical teams and system bodies looking for solutions to real pressures, that’s a catalogue they can act on with confidence. For innovators, it’s a signal that they’ve reached the threshold the system requires.
Connect
The NIA connects innovators with the NHS teams, commissioners, and system organisations best placed to take their work forward at the level of a single trust, an integrated care system, or a national priority. The introduction is often where adoption begins.
Learn
What Fellows learn about the realities of NHS adoption about what transfers, what doesn’t, and why, is shared back into the wider system. It informs how the NIA programme evolves, and how the health innovation landscape understands what sustainable spread actually looks like.
Alongside a learning programme, Fellows have access to range of trusted and credible mentors.
Join our network
The NHS Innovation Accelerator supports exceptional individuals to drive real change and scale high-impact innovations with bespoke support, expert guidance and trusted NHS networks.
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Innovations in active use across the NHS
The NIA portfolio spans patient-facing tools, workforce solutions, and operational improvements each with demonstrated impact and the commercial foundation to go further.
Suvera
Anubix
Upskill.Health
myHappymind
What adoption looks like in practice
Case studies, evidence, and perspectives from NHS teams and Fellows working at the edge of what the system is trying to do differently.
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