New funding mandate for UK health tech to be introduced in 2020, says health minister Nicola Blackw…

A new funding mandate for health tech will be introduced in 2020, according to health minister Nicola Blackwood.

Speaking at the Association of British HealthTech Industries (ABHI) conference in London yesterday (13 June), the Baroness said it was important to ensure the life science sector “continues to support innovative health tech SMEs to grow into scale companies to benefit the NHS, patients and the wider UK economy”.

To achieve this, she said, the government would create “a finance innovation ecosystem which promotes collaboration between the NHS and industry, to ensure new technologies meet NHS priorities and therefore have a ready-made market within the UK”.

This health tech funding mandate will be delivered as part of the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC), an umbrella organisation across the UK health innovation eco-system, which brings together NHS and industry partners.

The AAC will create a system that works together to identify the best new innovations and signal the needs of patients and clinicians to industry. It will also support early and flexible engagement on commercial arrangements to align innovation policy with trusts and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).