Getting an innovation approved by NICE as a medical device is not the end of the journey. For most innovators in life sciences, it is where the hard part begins. ICHP is the partner that helps bridge that gap, between proven and adopted, between sitting on a shelf and reaching a patient.
The problem approval doesn’t solve alone
There are, right now, approximately one million people in North West London who are eligible for treatments that could reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Around 300,000 of them are receiving those treatments.
That gap is not a clinical failure. It is a system design problem. The NHS does not always automatically absorb innovations, however well evidenced, however clearly recommended. Approved drugs sit unused. Effective technologies don’t reach the front line. Clinicians who would want to use a solution don’t know it exists, or don’t have the pathway infrastructure to deploy it, or don’t have the time to navigate the procurement and adoption process on top of everything else they already carry.
This is the problem that Matthew Wyatt, ICHP’s Partnership and Innovation Lead, spends most of his time thinking about. He describes his role as: “The matchmaker of ICHP. I find the partners, I find the innovations. I don’t deliver anything.”
That description undersells the role. What Matthew actually does is sit at the intersection of two worlds that rarely communicate well: the commercial organisations with products and resources, and the NHS system with needs and pathways – and makes the connections that help innovation travel.
Most of ICHP’s NHS members, the trust leads, the innovation managers, the clinical directors – let alone the frontline delivery teams – have no idea the pipeline below exists. When Matthew tells them there are 500 companies in ICHP’s CRM, the response is consistent: ‘Wow.’ They have not necessarily recognised ICHP as a gateway to 500 potential solutions for their problems.
Making that gateway visible is key:
“We probably don’t illuminate people’s view of what we can do for them,” Matthew says. “They look at what we’ve done, but they can’t pivot from that to understanding what we could do for them.”
The new partnership role Matthew has built in 2025/26 is specifically designed to change that. Three types of partnership. A clear offer for each. And an Innovation Exchange function that turns the 500-company funnel into practical support for innovations that align with NWL’s priorities.
What the Innovation Exchange actually does
When an innovator comes to ICHP, or when ICHP’s horizon scanning identifies a technology that could serve NWL’s needs, the process is structured and bespoke.
It begins with alignment: does this innovation match a real system priority? Then it moves through a series of practical steps designed to accelerate the journey from ‘proven somewhere’ to ‘adopted at scale’.
The Innovation Surgery is often the entry point: a focused 60-minute session with ICHP’s expert team, including Clinical Innovation Fellows who bring frontline clinical perspective on whether a solution is genuinely workable in practice. From there, ICHP can broker introductions to commissioners and clinicians, support funding proposal development, and provide the kind of trusted intermediary role that makes adoption conversations easier for all parties.
How ICHP partners with the life sciences industry
For pharma and life sciences companies looking to work with the NHS, the question is not whether NWL has the right infrastructure. It does. The question is whether their product genuinely serves a population need and whether ICHP is the right partner to help them do it well.
This is where the Innovation Exchange matters. We provide a structured route in, a clear front door, and a way to connect innovators, industry and NHS teams around defined system demand. We focus on four things: identifying need and communicating priorities, signposting and supporting innovators, enabling real-world validation, and supporting adoption and spread.
Matthew’s invitation to commercial partners is direct, but it is grounded in practical conditions rather than comparison. We can help partners work in a way that fits the system: through mission-led programmes where clinical and operational ownership is clear, through demand signalling that reduces noise, and through data and evaluation capability that helps the system make confident decisions.
