NHS guidance promotes SMEs to accelerate health innovation and supply resilience

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have issued new guidelines to enhance engagement with small and medium-sized enterprises, aiming to boost innovation, supply chain resilience, and health equity through more inclusive procurement practices.

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England have published practical guidance urging health-sector purchasers to increase engagement with small and medium-sized enterprises, arguing that doing so c...

an accelerate innovation, strengthen supply chains and improve health equity. According to the guidance, early engagement with smaller firms grants access to “often at the cutting edge of healthcare innovation” and to agile, tailored solutions that can address specific system pressures more quickly and often more cheaply than incumbent suppliers.

The government highlights SMEs’ concentration in areas central to NHS digital transformation, including interoperability, population-health dashboards and real-time analytics, and says these capabilities can help the service extract more value from its data and support more efficient care. It also points to advantages such as closer local ties that aid outreach to underserved groups, novel approaches to workforce wellbeing and scheduling, and contributions to supply-chain resilience.

To help commissioners bring SMEs into procurement, the guidance sets out practical steps: breaking large contracts into smaller lots; removing unnecessary complexity from specifications and qualification criteria that can exclude capable smaller firms; adopting phased delivery models that allow SMEs to expand involvement or form partnerships; and using milestone payments to ease early cash-flow pressures. The document also notes a statutory and strategic mandate: the Procurement Act 2023 and related NHS policy now encourage earlier SME involvement and longer-term collaborative supplier relationships. As the guidance states, “SMEs are not small versions of large suppliers – they are specialist partners who can help you unlock innovation, resilience, and a better and more dynamic supply chain. Engaging SMEs is not a ‘nice-to-have’ – it’s a smarter, more impactful way to engage markets and ensure best possible outcomes from procurements.”

The new advice sits alongside other initiatives intended to lower barriers for innovators. According to the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England guide Doing business with the health sector: a guide for buyers and small and medium‑sized enterprises (SMEs), purchasers are shown case studies and step‑by‑step advice for designing procurement that is fairer to smaller suppliers and easier to navigate. The NHS Innovation Service, run by NHS Supply Chain, offers a national route for innovators seeking coordinated support to bring products to clinicians and patients more rapidly, the service says.

Digital transformation pathways are also being adjusted to reflect supplier feedback. According to NHS Digital, changes to the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria will reduce the number of questions for suppliers, improve guidance on completion and align more closely with NICE to prioritise software-based digital health technologies; the revised DTAC form will replace the current assessment from 6 April 2026 and suppliers are advised not to use the former version from that date. The Tech Innovation Framework and the broader Digital Services for Integrated Care model are cited by NHS Digital as mechanisms to introduce assured, cloud‑hosted, browser‑based products built on open APIs, designed to modernise primary care and reduce burdens on practice staff.

Security and inclusion are prominent themes. An open letter from NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care in January 2026 stresses that suppliers share responsibility for proactive cyber-risk management across the health and care supply chain and outlines next steps for engagement to protect essential services. Meanwhile, NHS England Digital’s guidance on digital inclusion urges commissioners and service designers to tackle barriers faced by digitally excluded patients and staff, offering practical measures to improve access and digital skills locally.

Financial and programme support for early-stage innovation complements procurement changes. According to Innovate UK and government announcements, £20 million in grants is available through the Addiction Healthcare Goals programme for innovators developing digital tools such as wearables, apps and virtual‑reality interventions aimed at improving treatment and reducing harms from drug and alcohol addiction. In Scotland, InnoScot Health has called for early‑stage innovators , including healthcare entrepreneurs in training or in the first year of practice, student entrepreneurs and SMEs , offering support to take ideas towards commercialisation across patient‑care, workforce and remote‑care priorities.

Taken together, the guidance and the related initiatives aim to make the health sector more accessible to smaller firms while addressing risks around cybersecurity, digital exclusion and assurance. Industry schemes and NHS bodies emphasise that buyers will need to redesign procurement practice, streamline qualification processes and adopt phased contracting if they are to broaden supply‑base diversity and accelerate the adoption of promising technologies.

Source: Noah Wire Services