Health Visiting Innovation Programme

Work with organisations across Herefordshire and Worcestershire, including the ICB, Trusts, local services and end users to innovate the health visiting service.

What is the Health Visiting Innovation Programme ?

The West Midlands Health and Wellbeing Innovation Network, based at the University of Warwick, is delivering a challenge-led innovation programme with Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB to transform and strengthen health visiting service with digital tools. This programme aims to support health visitors with day to day tasks and show impact for families that use the service.

Our programme enables value exchange between innovators and key stakeholders within Herefordshire and Worcestershire services with the potential for tangible and impactful outcomes for service users and staff.

The key challenge areas we are looking for technologies in are:

· How might we enable health visitors to efficiently and accurately document and review visit notes and data whilst maintaining family rapport and willingness to disclose sensitive information?

If you think you have a solution that could support these challenges, please apply today.

Please note the challenges could be subject to change.

Please note that your application answers may be shared with the stakeholders participating in the innovation programme.

Applicants should be:

  • SMEs (UK-registered businesses preferred)
  • Able to provide technology relevant to the challenge
  • Willing and able to commit to workshops and co-design activity. Dates for which can be found on the application page.
  • Open to codesign and collaboration with NHS staff and iterate quickly
  • “Open” and able to create seamless workflows with existing NHS systems (EMIS, Rio etc)
  • Able to work within NHS data-governance constraints

This programme is supported by the West Midlands Health Tech Innovation Accelerator (WMHTIA) and offers innovators a unique opportunity to co-develop solutions with a highly engaged NHS partner.

Key Information

Location

Worcestershire and Herefordshire

Key Dates

Applications close on 20 February 2026

Title card saying, “Transforming urgent & emergency care through innovation” followed by “West-Midlands Health & Wellbeing Innovation Network”.

Josh Dale, Director, West Midlands Health and Wellbeing Innovation Network: At the West Midland’s Health & Wellbeing Innovation Network, we help the NHS to solve their problems and maximize opportunities.

James Gibson, Black Country Integrated Care Board, NHS Project Partner: To resolve challenges that we have in the urgent and emergency care setting, and looking for innovators to find technical solutions to those challenges.

Josh Dale: Urgent and emergency care is one of the front doors to the NHS. If we get it wrong at that point then it has a knock-on effect downstream to all of the services.

James Gibson: Whether that’s acute trusts, mental health trusts, ambulance services, one on one providers, all using different systems.

Josh Dale: So, collaboration is absolutely the key to solving some of the challenges.

James Gibson: The biggest thing that I’ve learned since being involved in this program is that we’ve got a lot of innovators out there that haven’t really got access to the NHS, or don’t currently work with the NHS, but have got some really really good ideas, and they’ve got lots of work and projects and solutions that are really really customisable, that could work for people like me who work in an ICB in the NHS, through to providers.

Achalanka Dalawella, Head of Product, Trendlytics: Patient flow is something very dear to us, that’s what we work on and what we see is the only way to really eliminate waiting, which is our goal, right, for our patients, is to really use machine learning and data science to make sure that the right action is taken at the right time, by all stakeholders, based off of what’s going to happen.

James Gibson: I think we started out with about 13 or 14 innovators, we narrowed it down to the five or six that we’ve got today for this demo day, and they’ve been working really really hard over the last 12 – 13 weeks to come up with the products that we’re seeing today.

Achalanka Dalawella: They’re really connecting the root problems that the hospitals and the NHS is facing with the possible solutions, I mean, I don’t know that any other institution is doing that, so hats off to them, a really great opportunity, we’re thankful.

End title card, “West-Midlands Health & Wellbeing Innovation Network”.

We help the NHS to solve their problems and to maximise opportunities

To learn more about the West Midlands Health & Wellbeing Innovation Network and to hear from our previous participants watch the video.

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Our key collaborators

F6S logo
WMHTIA logo
NHS Herefordshire and Worcestershire Logo
NHS University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust Logo
UKRI Innovate UK logo
NHS England logo
NHS Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust logo
West Midlands Combined Authority logo
NHS Black Country Integrated Care Board logo
NHS The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust logo
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NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust Logo
NHS South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust logo