The White Rose University Consortium, together with the University of Bradford, was awarded £4.7M to establish this partnership to provide a framework to dramatically accelerate innovation in technologies, methodologies and practices within the medical and healthcare sector. The project unified the commercialisation processes that operated in three separate ‘silos’ (clinical, industrial and academic) into a coherent supply chain to improve innovation throughout the Health Service. HIP received funding for 30 months from the Higher Education Innovation Fund with the following specific objectives,

• develop better links between academia, business and clinical delivery that will inform future developments and clinical practice;
• deliver a step-change in the pace of innovation across a wide range of healthcare technology organisations, with the resulting increase in business R&D, employment in high-tech jobs, and graduate retention;
• deliver a significant growth in the value of the health sector, and improvement in its performance;
  promote better alignment of the benefits of economic growth with national objectives for improved public health and patient care.

The project drew on the experience of mature medical technology markets in the US and developed opportunities by working with emerging markets in China through the China Association for Medical Devices Industry and Beijing Pharma & Biotech Centre.

White Rose HIP included new partners for the Consortium on both sides of the Atlantic: The University of Bradford; Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust; Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; the NHS Regional Innovation Centre for Yorkshire and Humber, Medipex Ltd.; the UK’s national Health Technologies Knowledge Transfer Network; professional association Medilink (Yorkshire & the Humber) Ltd.; five of the UK regional development agency Yorkshire Forward’s Centres of Industrial Collaboration: (BITE CIC, Particles CIC, Wireless CIC, The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation and Polymers CIC); the New Jersey Biotechnology & Life Sciences Coalition; New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University, Rutgers University; the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and the International Accelerated Radical Innovation Institute. It has attracted the strong support several global healthcare companies including: Smith & Nephew, Johnson & Johnson and B Braun.