About

Welcome to the NIHR Innovation Observatory, the home of health innovation futures scanning. We are the national horizon scanning and intelligence research centre. Driving methods and research in this area, we strive through the provision of early, robust intelligence, to enable efficiency in the innovation, regulation, and market access pathway thus playing a vital role in supporting getting the right innovations to patients at the right time.   

In addition to our collaborative research and AI tool and methods development, we provide routine outputs to two key stakeholders the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC). 

NICE Role

We support the NICE Technology Appraisal (TA) and Highly Specialised Technologies (HST) processes, which are designed to provide recommendations (in the form of NICE guidance) on the use of new and existing medicines, products and treatments in the NHS, England. Our role is to identify, filter, monitor and produce technology briefings for all innovative technologies that meet the NICE criteria and are within 5 years of an estimated UK license date.  

AAC Role

We also support the AAC providing strategic horizon scanning reports and intelligence that underpin their central horizon scanning function. Using both proactive scanning and bespoke reports to deliver timely insights and data. These bespoke intelligence scanning requests come from wider AAC members via the NHS E/I Innovation, Research & Life Sciences Group. They are then prioritised and filtered prior to a collaborative scoping exercise beginning with all relevant stakeholders. We take a collaborative approach throughout to ensuring that the outputs produced are fit for purpose and support AAC stakeholders next steps.