SBRI Healthcare (NHS England)

Funds SBRI Healthcare, the United Kingdom route for innovators tackling health and social care delivery challenges.

SBRI Healthcare, funded by NHS England and delivered by Health Innovation Network, is the UK's national route for innovators working on NHS and health and social care problems. It is not a conventional grant maker: the programme uses pre-commercial procurement contracts, and companies retain 100% of their intellectual property while the NHS commissions development work.

The current portfolio is built around two procurement phases. Phase 1 carries awards of up to £100,000, while Phase 2 can reach £1 million. Since launch around 2009, the programme has awarded more than £163 million and supported more than 373 products, which shows a large delivery record for companies that can meet an NHS need with a credible development plan.

Its position in the market is unusually practical. Instead of funding open-ended research, SBRI Healthcare brings companies into direct response to service challenges, with the NHS as the customer and the delivery network keeping the work close to frontline priorities. That makes it most relevant to firms that can move from problem definition to prototype, validation, and deployment on a procurement timeline.