WMHTIA Evaluation report
This report supplements the West Midlands Health Tech Innovation Accelerator (WMHTIA) Pathfinder Report and provides updated information on enterprises engaged and supported over three years of the programme, new initiatives supported towards the end of year 2 and in year 3 including the Primary Care Accelerator, Reg-Navigator, AI-Hub and Venture Readiness Canvas and WMHTIA programme impacts including agreed core metrics with Innovate UK.
The WMHTIA was a bold and ambitious project, funded by Innovate UK, that delivered on its objectives. It generated economic benefit to the West Midlands by supporting a significant number of health tech businesses to drive their products to the next stage of the translational pathway to market. In a relatively short period, it demonstrated how a truly collaborative approach can achieve rapid, meaningful outcomes for enterprises.
WMHTIA has provided ‘valuable learning for similar regional innovation ecosystem support programmes’.
Including:
- How to effectively mobilise key assets in a regional innovation ecosystem to support the commercialisation of health technologies.
- Developing effective partnerships within a large collaboration that allowed partners to define their areas of expertise and achieve more collectively to create a step change in the West Midlands health technology innovation ecosystem.
- The need for more sophisticated and nuanced approaches to assessing development needs, onboarding businesses, and the measurement of their progress, rather than relying on technology readiness and market readiness levels for measuring impact of the WMHTIA. In response to this need, WMHTIA developed the Venture Readiness Canvas, which is to be adapted for use on the West Midlands LIPF programme.
Meet the authors
- George Bramley (Principal Evaluator)
- Tom Burton (Senior Economic Analyst)
- Luan Linden-Phillips (WMHTIA Programme Manager, with expertise in stakeholder engagement and ecosystem development, specialising in health technology innovation and market access).
- Gerardo Javier Arriaga Garcia (Research Fellow)
- Annum Rafique (Research Fellow)
- Chloe Billing (Research Fellow)
- Nikolas Venetsaneas (Business Engagement)
- Matt Lyons (Research Fellow)
- Huanjia Ma, (Research Fellow)
- Bethan Miles (Strategic partner with expertise in leading national-level innovation programmes and mentoring organisations to develop commercially focussed business solutions).
- Alexandre Mauser (Business Engagement - Supporting delivery outputs across programme with businesses and the consortia of delivery partners. Pursing the positive outcomes from matchmaking process).
- Derek Sear (Business Engagement- Lead - Acting as a critical partner to businesses, creating innovative solutions for data and engagement , optimising the partnerships across the consortia to deliver enhanced benefits. A key partner in developing VRC.)