Apply for NHS Innovation Accelerator
The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) 2024 recruitment call is now closed for applications.
To be successful with your 2024 NIA application, your innovation should be:
✔ In use in at least one site, in the NHS or elsewhere
✔ Supported by an evidence base and able to demonstrate better patient and/or staff outcomes
✔ Ready to spread across the NHS
✔ Led by an applicant who is open to learning and sharing insights
✔ Aligned with one of the 2023 call themes:
Maternity (Adults)
Mental Health/Severe Mental illness (Adults, and Children and Young People)
Cancer (Adults)
Respiratory Disease/Asthma (Adults, and Children and Young People)
Hypertension/Cardiovascular Disease (Adults)
Diabetes (Children and Young People)
Epilepsy (Children and Young People)
Oral Health (Children and Young People)
Carbon Reduction/Net Zero
Application deadline is now closed.
2024 applications are now in assessment phase.
Selection process
Application screening and assessment
Applicants are asked to submit an application form detailing information about themselves and their skills; experience and competencies to spread an innovation; as well as their innovation, the problem it addresses, the evidence as to its effectiveness and their strategy for scaling in the NHS.
Applications will close 27 October 2023
Shortlisting
Application forms are shortlisted by a minimum of five assessors drawn from a range of perspectives including clinical, patient, commercial and implementation. Applications are assessed on the basis of the applicant, the innovation, and confirmation that there is no straightforward or obvious local mechanism for scaling; in other words, there needs to be a clear reason as to why the applicant needs the support of the NIA.
Those put forward at this stage are informally reviewed by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).
Interview
Shortlisted applicants are invited to a panel interview, which is comprised of a range of expertise, including clinical, commercial and patient.
Selection
After the interviews, a final decision panel chaired by Professor Stephen Powis, National Medical Director for NHS England and NHS Improvement, and Chair of the NIA Programme Board, reviews the recommendations from the assessment process (application, NICE review and interview) to agree which applicants will be offered a conditional place on the NIA.
Diligence
Successful applicants are offered a conditional place on the NIA subject to a due diligence process.
Two references are requested for each potential Fellow – one of whom needs to be a senior representative from the Fellow’s employing organisation; the other should be from a healthcare provider/ commissioner site where your innovation is currently in use (this does not need to be an NHS site). Additionally at this stage, the NIA requests – where relevant – two years of annual accounts, a list of company directors and published annual reports.