How can we help clinical entrepreneurs to succeed?

Healthcare professionals have frontline proximity to system and patient centred challenges in a way that many traditional MedTech manufacturers don’t. Unsurprisingly, this gives them a unique insight and the potential to develop ideas for how care could be improved – ideas that could be the seedling of a new product or technology. 

Fortunately, the value these individuals can add is recognised and there are several initiatives designed to help healthcare professionals commercialise their ideas. For example, the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme (NHS CEP), a national initiative launched in 2016, is designed to accelerate the introduction of new ground-breaking treatments by providing support programmes that include mentoring, workshops and events. This enables the testing of innovative ideas alongside existing clinical commitments¹ and is a similar programme to academic initiatives like Medici,² but tailored for NHS staff.

I use the term ‘clinical entrepreneurs’ in this  article to refer to clinicians and healthcare professionals who also spend time working on developing a new product or technology, because it is important to note that not all clinical entrepreneurs are on the official NHS CEP. There are clinicians who develop new products in conjunction with stakeholders in their local ecosystem and others who commercialise ideas entirely independently of the existing entrepreneurial support networks.