The National Heath Service (NHS), which is responsible for public health services in the UK, is a gigantic organisation. It employs 1.5 million people and runs an annual budget of £172 billion (€195 billion). Each year, the NHS commissions services worth more than ten billion euros from private sector actors, and it also encourages private companies to develop their services in a direction that supports NHS operations in a wide range of sectors.
The NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) is highly sought after by businesses and is very difficult to join. This year, one of the elected private companies was Procomp from Finland.
Based on the applications, innovative companies whose solutions the NHS considers to have real added value and at the same time opportunities to provide services to different NHS units are accepted for the accelerator programme. To date, 85 innovations have been able to deliver services to nearly three thousand NHS locations through the programme, and these projects have created more than 1100 new jobs.
“My hands started shaking a bit when the selection result became clear,” says Jani Rautiainen, CEO of Procomp. “We have been working in the UK for almost a decade now and we have seen the challenges of the market, especially in the health sector. This is a reward for hard work.”
“The selection process was multi-stage and demanding,” says Mark Russell-Smith, Head of International Operations at Procomp . “The selectors reviewed our customer relationships in Finland and two customer projects carried out in England. Our AI-based system that optimises mobility and resources is an innovation that is really needed here. Home care staff in the UK drive an estimated 2.5 billion kilometres a year between clients.”
This year, 17 companies were accepted into the accelerator programme. In total, almost a hundred companies are participating in the accelerator program. “The NHS helps all companies eligible for the programme to find business and customer relationships within organisations operating under the NHS. At the same time, the companies in the accelerator programme form a valuable network that allows us to open new partnerships in many different directions,” says Jani Rautiainen.
“I am excited to see these seventeen new innovators joining our program. NIA will support them in testing whether their ideas can be deployed and scaled across the NHS,” said Sir Stephen Powis, Director of NHS England and Chair of the NHS Innovation Accelerator Programme.
Further information: Jani Rautiainen, CEO, tel. 040 525 2322, jani.rautiainen@procomp.fi
