NIHR Innovation Catalyst Pilot

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has launched the Innovation Catalyst, a new pilot initiative designed to accelerate healthcare innovations from development through to real-world implementation.

The programme combines funding, specialist support, national research infrastructure, and expert guidance to help innovators overcome technical, regulatory, clinical, and commercial barriers that often delay adoption within health and care systems.

The theme of the 2026 pilot is "Enabling Care Beyond the Hospital", supporting innovations that contribute to the development of neighbourhood health services and improve care delivery within community settings.

Scope of the Programme

The Innovation Catalyst supports transformative and disruptive healthcare innovations that have the potential to improve patient outcomes, service delivery, and system efficiency within the NHS and social care sectors.

The programme focuses on innovations intended for deployment within community and neighbourhood care settings rather than hospital-based care alone.

Eligible Technologies

• MedTech: Medical devices, in vitro diagnostics (IVDs), in vivo diagnostics, companion diagnostics, and device-enabled procedures including image-guided or minimally invasive approaches
• Digital health: Digital health technologies (DHTs), Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools, clinical decision support systems, remote monitoring platforms, assistive technologies for independent living or social care and platforms supporting care coordination, or service efficiency
• Biotech and pharmaceuticals: Biotherapeutics and biologics, advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), vaccines, biologically active delivery or regenerative systems, novel small molecule drugs (new chemical entities), or drug-delivery systems

Technology Readiness Requirements

MedTech and Digital Health

Projects must be at least Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 and may include:

• TRL 4-7 technologies requiring validation and clinical evaluation
• TRL 7+ technologies with demonstrated safety and effectiveness seeking wider NHS adoption

Biotech and Pharmaceuticals

Projects must have:

• Demonstrated safety in humans
• Readiness for Phase II clinical trials
• Preliminary evidence supporting efficacy evaluation

Activities include, but are not limited to:

• Development, optimisation, and validation of interventions including advanced prototyping, engineering, formulation, software development, human factors and usability testing or other activities required to prepare an intervention for formal evaluation
• Regulatory and commercial activities to support development, evaluation, and potential adoption such as CE/UKCA marking, intellectual property (IP) management, freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis, and UK-focused market access development
• Mechanistic studies to understand how interventions produce their effects, including investigation of biological, behavioural, physiological or system mechanisms, where these are embedded within or directly linked to intervention evaluation
• Feasibility and pilot studies to assess safety, acceptability, usability, delivery models and study design considerations, and to inform viability of subsequent full-scale evaluation
• Efficacy, comparative evaluation or real-world evaluation of interventions, including trials and other robust study designs assessing outcomes against appropriate comparators, alongside supporting analyses such as health economic evaluation and process evaluation