Who and Why
Who The Health Innovation Expedition is designed for
People across health and social care often recognise unmet needs and opportunities for improvement, but are rarely supported to develop them in practice.
For front-line NHS staff, this often means lacking the time, tools or confidence to turn day-to-day problems affecting patient care into credible, evidence-based solutions. Early-career researchers are increasingly expected to demonstrate impact and translation, or to strengthen their employability, yet may have limited exposure to how research ideas move beyond academia. Pre-registration undergraduates, meanwhile, can struggle to differentiate themselves when entering the NHS or wider health system, or to make a credible case for change or involvement in research and improvement activity.
Support structures can also be fragmented or unclear. Line managers and senior leaders may be supportive in principle, but constrained by governance, risk, funding pressures and a lack of visible pathways for innovation, meaning promising ideas can stall early or fail to progress beyond informal discussion.
For SMEs and start-ups, the challenge is different but related. Without a clear understanding of NHS needs, patient pathways, regulatory expectations and routes to adoption, even strong products can struggle to gain traction in real-world care settings. Front-line staff may also experience innovation as something introduced to them rather than developed with them, with limited opportunity to shape design or implementation.
Taken together, these challenges can lead to frustration and disengagement — not only for those developing ideas, but also for the research, technology transfer, improvement and transformation teams supporting them — resulting in lost opportunities and innovation that fails to translate into impact.
Below are three key participant groups and how they benefit from the course. Intentionally mixing cohorts from different backgrounds can enrich the creation of solutions!
Early Career Researchers (PhD students & Postdocs)
For early-career researchers whose work has potential application in health, understanding how research translates into tangible impact is increasingly important. This course helps research masters, PhD students and postdoctoral researchers understand how research moves beyond academia and into practice — including how to engage with the NHS, work effectively with technology transfer offices, and navigate the expectations of different industries involved in health innovation. Participants gain practical insight into how new products, services, diagnostics or pathways are developed, assessed and adopted within complex health systems. The course also supports employability beyond traditional academic routes. Participants develop skills in building credible business cases and pitches, understanding intellectual property and routes to commercialisation, and articulating impact in ways that are relevant to funders, partners and employers. These capabilities are increasingly important for grant applications, translational funding, and careers spanning academia, industry and the NHS.
Health-related Undergraduate &
Taught Masters
For students studying medicine, nursing, allied health professions, or health-related science, computing, engineering, humanities and arts disciplines who are interested in how the future of health is shaped. This course helps students develop a practical understanding of how innovation operates across health systems — from identifying meaningful problems through to understanding how change is proposed, assessed and implemented. It equips students with the confidence and language to make a credible case for improvement, even when starting out early in their careers and working within hierarchical organisations. Participants also gain insight into how the wider health innovation ecosystem functions, including the roles of the NHS, academia, industry and policy. Students from humanities and arts backgrounds contribute perspectives that shape policy, communication, experience and environment, supporting the design of services and settings that are effective, inclusive and less intimidating for patients and staff. Together, this supports employability by helping students understand how different disciplines interact in practice, what skills and behaviours are valued, and how to engage with research, improvement and innovation activity alongside clinical, technical or creative training.
Front Line Health Staff, Leadership & Management
For front-line staff working in the NHS or other health and care settings who encounter real, practical problems in patient care and service delivery on a daily basis. This course supports front-line practitioners who are interested in developing solutions to the problems they see first-hand — whether system-wide or related to specific processes, pathways, procedures or equipment. Participants gain practical tools to help turn identified needs into well-framed, evidence-informed proposals, increasing the likelihood that ideas are taken seriously and progressed. Working in mixed, multidisciplinary teams reflects how innovation happens in practice and helps participants learn how to collaborate effectively across roles and organisations. For senior managers and leaders, the course provides insight into how innovation processes operate in reality, and how organisational structures, governance and culture can either enable or unintentionally block progress. By understanding the stages ideas move through, leaders are better equipped to support innovators, create clearer pathways, and use innovation as a lever for positive and inclusive organisational change.
What ideas need in order to progress
Many promising ideas struggle to progress, not because they lack merit, but because key elements are missing early on. Common gaps include:
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A clear, evidence-based understanding of the problem - including its scale, who it affects, and why it matters - and the ability to communicate this effectively.
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Awareness of existing solutions and alternatives, and a clear articulation of how a proposed idea is different or adds value.
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An understanding of feasibility, potential impact and routes to implementation, including commercialisation pathways and business models where relevant.
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Knowing how to identify, engage and involve the right strategic stakeholders — internally and externally — to build support and momentum.
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The skills to develop credible business cases and pitch ideas appropriately to different audiences.
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A realistic appreciation of timescales, effort and sustained drive required to take an idea forward.
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An understanding of organisational change and how innovation processes operate within NHS and health system settings.
How The Health Innovation Expedition addresses these challenges
These gaps are rarely anyone’s fault. They often arise from differences in language, expectations and ways of working between professional groups. The information that research, technology transfer, improvement and transformation teams need can feel unfamiliar, even though front-line staff and researchers often already hold much of the insight required.
Most people working in health have never had the opportunity to receive structured, practical training in health innovation. Where innovation or business modules do exist, they are often optional, fragmented, or taught without sufficient connection to real-world health systems and industry practice, making it difficult to see how individual topics link together in practice.
The course has been designed to address these challenges directly. It provides practical tools, shared frameworks and hands-on experience to improve the likelihood that ideas progress, saving time and effort for those developing them and those supporting them. This is particularly valuable for people at earlier career stages, enabling them to build credible cases for change, understand how different organisations and roles contribute at different stages, access appropriate funding, and navigate how health, academic and industry systems operate in practice.
