Health Innovation West Midlands (HIWM), which accelerates the adoption and spread of transformative health innovations, is now based at PHTA Ltd – supporting innovators and local entrepreneurs to speed up development and clinical rollout. 

As part of the national Health Innovation Network, funded by NHS England, HIWM catalyses collaboration between academia, industry, health and care providers, commissioners and citizens, supporting the development of healthcare innovations and giving patients access to the most effective medical discoveries, sooner. 

Since it was established in 2013, HIWM has supported hundreds of NHS and health and care organisations to adopt technologies and pathways that respond to local health priorities through its innovation exchange – identifying unmet needs and opportunities to help innovators understand local healthcare challenges; enabling evaluation and testing of innovations; and supporting the scaling and spread of innovations from local and regional to national adoption. 

Professor Gino Martini, Chief Executive Officer of PHTA, said: “Having HIWM under the same roof as entrepreneurs, researchers and SMEs developing the next generation of medical advances will be enormously beneficial. Our resident companies will be able to access HIWM’s expertise in NHS implementation, commercialisation and service improvement – leading to better outcomes for patients in our region and far beyond. We are thrilled to welcome them to PHTA and look forward to working with the team.” 

Tim Jones, Chief Officer at HIWM said: “Being based at PHTA places us at the heart of a thriving life sciences ecosystem. It’s a natural fit for our mission to accelerate innovation in health and care, and we’re excited about the opportunities this move creates for deeper collaboration with entrepreneurs, researchers and clinicians across the region.” 

PHTA is the University of Birmingham’s flagship life sciences innovation facility, based at No.1 Birmingham Health Innovation Campus. Home to the Clinical Immunology Services and Industry Trials Hub, PHTA also provides state-of-the-art incubation and collaboration space to ambitious SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups across 70,000 sq ft of bespoke Category 2 wet and dry labs and office space, the Makerspace – a prototyping and small-batch manufacturing facility – and an extensive training suite.

Pictured: Tim Jones, left, and Gino Martini, right.