91探花

The timing only adds salt to the wound 鈥� Oura has confidentially filed for a US IPO at an $11 billion valuation, and Whoop has signalled that its $575 million Series G will be its final private funding round before going public. Meanwhile, the femtech sector has seen a sharp acceleration with Q1 2026 investment figures already surpassing the total for all of 2025. AI diagnostic tools are no longer in research trials 鈥� they鈥檙e running live in NHS trusts, detecting conditions from chest X-rays in under a minute, supporting stroke network decisions, screening for cancer.

Innovation is moving at breakneck speed, yet the barrier to adoption remains stubbornly fixed. Healthtech founders describe a system where pilots run for years without converting to contracts, where procurement favours acquisition cost over patient outcomes, and where a product validated in one NHS trust still has to prove itself from scratch in the next.

听

The Problem Goes Deeper Than Procurement

听

It鈥檚 tempting to frame the NHS adoption problem as a funding issue, or a regulatory one, or a procurement one.

Yaroslav Dokuchaev of Dico by Expert Radiotech, who has spent years working with large radiology networks, thinks the root sits somewhere else entirely.

鈥淢any people discuss the challenge of implementing innovations in the NHS as a problem of procurement, funding, or regulatory constraints. All of these are indeed important, but in my view, the root of the problem lies deeper,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hile many innovations improve individual functions, the main limitations of modern medicine increasingly arise at the interfaces between them 鈥� in the coordination of specialists, the exchange of information, decision-making and process organisation.鈥�

His point is that a technology can work perfectly and still fail, because the constraints it鈥檚 trying to solve aren鈥檛 located inside a single function. They鈥檙e in the space between functions 鈥� in how departments communicate, how data moves, how decisions get made across a system that was built for reliability, not speed.

鈥淭he NHS was not historically designed for the rapid adoption of innovations,鈥� Dokuchaev continues. 鈥淚ts primary mission has always been to ensure the safety, reliability and predictability of care for millions of patients. Therefore, resistance to change is often not a sign of the system鈥檚 inefficiency, but a consequence of its original design.鈥�

听

Pilot Purgatory Is A Structural Problem, Not A Cultural One

听

Marten den Haring, CEO of Lirio, an AI and behavioural science platform with active NHS partnerships, has seen the same pattern play out repeatedly from the inside. The barrier for the NHS isn鈥檛 a lack of interest, but a lack of the infrastructure necessary to implement these tools system-wide.

鈥淗istorically, hundreds of NHS trusts and GP practices independently procured their own EHR and IT systems, resulting in incompatible architectures and data silos that prevent a complete picture of a person鈥檚 health journey from ever forming,鈥� he says. 鈥淕ood data is foundational to effective AI, and that disjointed architecture makes it structurally harder to build tools that drive real behaviour change at scale.鈥�

Decision-making is split across trusts, procurement cycles routinely outlast the funding available for pilots, and the distance between where value is recognised and where budget authority sits means that well-evidenced tools can get stuck at the door for years.

鈥淲hat feels broken isn鈥檛 the innovation,鈥� den Haring says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a lack of clear, shared outcomes that actually scale and do not deepen inequalities across sites. Too often success is defined locally, which means things work in pockets but do not translate system-wide. That fragmentation, often between national and local priorities, is what keeps so many tools stuck in pilot mode.鈥�

听

What Needs To Change On Both Sides

听

The Association of British HealthTech Industries has documented the barriers in detail. According to ABHI, 67% of NHS Trusts had capital funds they couldn鈥檛 spend due to accounting rules. The NIHR receives over a billion pounds a year for health research and the national network responsible for adoption receives around 拢50 million. This imbalance 鈥� funding discovery while starving implementation 鈥� is one of the more absurd features of a system that wants to improve patient care.

NHS England is piloting an AI Deployment Platform for medical imaging that could centralise the routing and return of radiological AI results across multiple sites. This is progress 鈥� but it鈥檚 only a signal, not a systemic overhaul. Having spent years trapped in 鈥榩ilot purgatory,鈥� healthtech founders have learned that optimistic announcements are no substitute for the structural reform required to actually scale.

Den Haring鈥檚 advice to founders is straightforward: 鈥淧rove value in the NHS鈥檚 language, not your own. That means focusing on outcomes aligned to system priorities, not product features, and building clinical champions who can carry the case internally. Too many founders still optimise for pilot success rather than system adoption. Pilots should be treated as the start of a relationship, not a standalone test.鈥�

For the NHS itself, he鈥檚 equally clear: 鈥淭he shift needed is towards procurement and governance structures that reward proven outcomes and enable scale. There is also a need for clearer pathways from pilot to adoption, with real accountability and budget ownership at the point where decisions are made. The infrastructure for innovation exists. What is missing is the connective tissue that turns promising pilots into system-wide change.鈥�

In reality, this is a two-sided challenge, and it has proven immune to one-sided fixes. Whether the current wave of healthtech capital and the public scrutiny that comes with high-profile IPOs finally creates enough pressure to change it is the question the sector has been asking for years.