Build ‘Coalitions Of The Willing’ To Drive Innovation Zones, Analysis Urges
Innovation zones should be built through a ‘coalition of the willing’ who can agree priorities, pool budgets and resources, and share implementation support to improve health care, new analysis published today by The King’s Fund on medtech innovation in the NHS, finds.
The King’s Fund brought together patient representatives, NHS and medtech representatives to look at how innovation can improve patient care and boost economic growth. It comes after multiple strategies published in 2025 linked the NHS, life sciences and economic growth together more explicitly as part of the government’s agenda.
The 10 Year Health Plan proposed health innovation zones, but to date there has been little to no updates on how these are being established. The zones envisioned by the government would experiment, test, and generate evidence on implementing innovation. One of the key findings from this new analysis is to build a ‘coalition of the willing’ when establishing these innovation zones.
This approach would bring together a collaborative group of providers across a geography that agree priorities, pool budgets and resources, and share implementation support. The innovation zones could use mechanisms like corporate social responsibility contributions to cluster innovation and research capability and deliver increasing gains over time.
The report also said that these innovation zones should be given ‘permission’ to become forerunners in developing and testing necessary changes to regulation needed for novel innovation. This could deliver benefits for patients in the UK and create more international opportunities for UK-based innovators.
The research also found that innovation cannot be considered a ‘nice to have’ for the NHS. The most capable NHS organisations could in future become Integrated Health Organisations (IHOs) that hold a budget for their whole local population. Making this status conditional, in part, on their capability to develop and implement novel innovations successfully would send a powerful message that the NHS is taking innovation seriously. Over time, this could help create a visible group of organisations that are set up to create groundbreaking innovations with industry, adopt them and scale up what works so more patients can benefit.
The recommendations in the report included:
• Deliver Innovation Zones that speed up proven medtech concepts into routine care delivery – through a ‘coalition of the willing’ that shares priorities, budgets and implementation support
• Prioritise a small number of innovations for rapid national scale (and be explicit about trade-offs)
• Create and expand NHS venture funds to back innovations that measurably improve outcomes, safety and patient experience – and help scale what works across the NHS
• Reward organisations that have the capability to adopt, evaluate and scale innovations – so more patients benefit, not just those in pilot sites
• Stop ‘pilot purgatory’: design tests around adoption and patient impact, with clear pathways to spread and standardise
• Pool innovation budgets across local partners to tackle shared patient needs and population challenges – reducing unwarranted variation in access, outcomes and experience
• Fund clinical, organisational and patient leadership so services co-design change and build demand for innovations that improve care
Pritesh Mistry, author of the research and Fellow for Digital Technology at The King’s Fund, said: ‘Innovation is essential to improving patient care, safety and quality. The NHS has distinctive strengths: credibility with patients and industry, a diverse population who could benefit from more innovative care, and the potential for strong real-world evaluation to ensure these innovations are improving the nation’s health. But these strengths are suppressed and underused. The current challenge is less about inventing new ideas and more about building the practical conditions for adoption and scale of existing innovations.
‘If national strategies are to translate into better care and economic growth, the NHS will need simpler routes to implementation, stronger collaboration, clearer investment mechanisms and sustained clinical and patient leadership. Above all, it will need to move from a culture of pilots to a culture of delivery.’
