The Health Tech Alliance welcomes the recent announcements on a newly revamped Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) and the formal launch of HealthTech Connect, the new online resource to help identify and support new health technologies as they move to adoption.
The Collaborative, the body that brings together senior stakeholders across the health system, will now become the new umbrella organisation for UK health innovation – something that was alluded to in last year’s Life Sciences Sector Deal 2. The AAC will act as ‘front door’ to innovators and provide support to overcome the barriers to adoption and uptake.
To do this, a new unit within NHS England and improvement has been established and will be led by Dr Sam Roberts, NHS England’s Director of Innovation and Life Sciences. The Health Tech Alliance’s members were delighted to hear from Dr Roberts back in September 2018 at our members’ meeting.
Commenting on Dr Roberts appointment, Dame Barbara Hakin, Chair of the Health Tech Alliance, said: “I am delighted to hear that Dr Sam Roberts will act as Chief Executive to the newly refreshed Accelerated Access Collaborative. The UK remains a flourishing environment for life sciences and its imperative that game-changing healthtech innovation reach patients and the NHS as quickly as possible”.
The new AAC will, amongst other things, signal clinician and patient need better, establish a ‘globally leading’ testing infrastructure and oversee a health innovation funding strategy.
Meanwhile, the launch of HealthTech Connect is another welcome step in alleviating the current barriers that health technologies face. The free-to-use system will help companies to understand what information is needed by decision makers in the UK health and care system and clarity possible routes to market access. Since it’s initial ‘soft’ launch in February, more than 100 companies have already registered to use HealthTech Connect. The Health Tech Alliance’s members received a live-demo of the HealthTech Connect system back in May 2018 as part of a wider event on best practice in NICE submissions and assessments.