Nick Lansman, founder and chief executive of innovation coalition the Health Tech Alliance, discusses unlocking the potential of healthtech.
The UK is not short of ambition when it comes to developing health technology. Over the past few years, we have seen a steady stream of national strategies and frameworks, from commitments to value‑based procurement (VBP) to new medtech adoption routes and Modern Service Frameworks for digital tools. NICE’s new National HealthTech Access Programme, announced at our Parliament & HealthTech Conference last month, is a welcome example.
Yet the real test of all this activity will come by 2030. By then, the main question will be whether proven devices, diagnostics and digital tools are routinely embedded in NHS pathways, or if they will still be stuck in pilots and proof of concepts.
Removing the red tape
The current reality is that the UK doesn’t have an ideas problem but a bureaucracy and system‑design problem. For many innovators, the NHS still looks like a patchwork of mini‑markets rather than a cohesive system. Each Integrated Care System (ICS) and commissioning body can have its own rules and evidence expectations. Instead of one predictable route to adoption, companies face overlapping processes, variable demands for data and repeated local pilots to demonstrate benefits that may already be well established elsewhere. This complexity slows the spread of technologies that could improve outcomes and relieve pressure on staff. The NHS should be a front door for innovation, but due to red tape and the bureaucratic nature of the current procurement processes, it instead acts more like a drawbridge.
Purchasing decisions have typically been made on price alone, rather than on what delivers the best value for patients. A genuine value‑based approach would look beyond the immediate cost per device to consider outcomes and workforce productivity. However, experience from health technology assessments and procurement reviews shows how fragmented, duplicative processes and in‑year budget pressures make it difficult for organisations to choose higher‑value devices and diagnostics, even when the long‑term case is robust.
The Health Tech Alliance procurement report highlights how this challenge disproportionately hurts small and medium-sized enterprises. When the financial benefits of a technology build up in a different part of the system, or in a future financial year, the system is structurally inclined to pick the lowest upfront cost. This undermines innovation and makes it harder to invest in tools that support prevention and earlier intervention.
What the future of healthtech needs to look like
There is, however, a clear opportunity to redesign how healthtech moves from concept to standard care, creating a single joined‑up route from evidence to adoption.
Firstly, once the 13 VBP pilots in NHS trusts conclude and are evaluated, a national commitment to VBP must move from the published framework, pilot scheme and rhetoric in the 10 Year Health Plan into reality and implementation. That should include a national implementation plan for healthtech, with a clear methodology for devices and diagnostics, defined priority categories where VBP is expected as the default, and alignment with NICE, the new adoption route and the Innovator Passport scheme. This would embed a consistent expectation that procurement decisions weigh patient outcomes, not just price, giving both the NHS and industry a shared framework for assessing value and helping to align local purchasing decisions with wider system priorities on productivity and prevention.
Alongside this, ring‑fenced local innovation budgets are needed at the trust and ICS level. Even if relatively small, protected funds would allow systems to back devices that shorten length of stay, avoid admissions or free up clinical time, even where there is an upfront cost.
Procurement teams also need the tools and skills to make value‑based decisions in practice. A national programme should support NHS commercial teams to compare whole‑pathway value, such as bed days saved, complications avoided, and staff time released, rather than relying on list price alone.
Finally, VBP should be linked directly to Modern Service Frameworks (MSF). When MSFs specify an intervention, for example, a particular category of device or diagnostic, VBP should be the default route to commissioning it, ensuring that service redesign, procurement and innovation are all pulling in the same direction.
The measure of progress
If these elements are in place by 2030, successful healthtech integration will mean patients receive proven devices as standard care, leading to earlier detection, safer procedures and more tailored treatment.
The measure of progress will not be how many healthtech strategies or roadmaps have been published, but whether the devices and tools they champion have been put into everyday practice. Turning that ambition into reality will require government and NHS leaders to simplify and align adoption pathways. Clinicians and patients, meanwhile, must be at the heart of defining what value looks like in practice. The next chapter must be about implementation, alignment and scale, ensuring that by 2030, the UK is judged not on what it promised for medtech, but on the tangible difference those technologies make in NHS care every day. We look forward to working with DHSC, the independent sector and the NHS to close the gap between plan and practice.
