Novartis Biome UK

Launched in February 2020, the Novartis Biome UK provides a platform for health tech entrepreneurs in the UK to work with Novartis and connect via our growing network of Digital Innovation Hubs around the world. The UK Innovation Hub is located at the Novartis UK headquarters in White City – a growing and emerging life sciences hub in West London.

Our vision for the Novartis Biome UK is to be a catalyst for impactful digital collaborations and our purpose is to be a point of convergence for digital innovation as we strive to become the number one partner to the NHS and the tech ecosystem in the UK. We aspire to harness the latest science and technology to realize the healthcare solutions of tomorrow, co-created with the NHS, to improve and extend the lives of patients.

This includes innovative ways to provide access to medicine to more patients, accelerated through the Biome. It also asks for a much wider cross-industry collaboration to advance health outcomes and unlock potentials to positively impact lives.

Areas of Focus

The Novartis Biome UK has a strong focus on helping the NHS and wider health and care system in the UK by supporting health tech companies through the Health Hub and providing solutions to healthcare challenges at scale.

This solidifies our continued efforts to accelerate patient access to remote care in the UK including digitizing the patient pathway with internal and external stakeholders. Partnerships and cross-industry collaboration is vital to our work to drive efficiencies in the healthcare system and ultimately improve population health outcomes.

In short, we are:

• Supporting the continuous improvement of industry and NHS and its stakeholders
• Establishing the Biome as a focal point for innovation enablement in the UK health space and beyond
• Driving the digitization of patient pathways across all therapy areas
• Improving cross-industry collaboration

Establishment

In 2019, we established the Health Hub Accelerator – in partnership with Wayra UK (Telefonica’s start-up arm), co-designed with the NHS – to support the development of start-ups with innovative health solutions. In the same year, Virtue Health, TestCard and ExSeed joined as the first three successful start-ups.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, the priorities of the Novartis Biome UK were pivoted in a renewed call to accelerate and scale digital health solutions to help address the medium to long-term challenges for the NHS created by the unprecedented pandemic.

The Health Hub Accelerator 2020 was launched with a renewed call for start-ups with digital health tech solutions that could help address these new challenges for the NHS in areas such as improving care pathways and the continuity of care in community settings. The chosen finalists were Albert Health, MedWise and Vinehealth.

The Health Hub Accelerator 2021 Challenge in collaboration with KQ Labs and LifeArc will provide mentoring advice, partnership opportunities and sustainable investments to data-driven start-ups and small and medium enterprises with solutions for digitizing patient pathways and advancing remote care in a COVID era.