View our current innovation projects, showcasing high-impact initiatives that improve patient care, enhance clinical education and accelerate digital transformation across healthcare. Each project is supported to scale impact and deliver meaningful, real-world benefits across the region.
What the innovation is
I-IMPACT is an award-winning online self-management programme designed to support people living with long-term cardiac, respiratory and Covid-related conditions. The programme helps users manage symptoms more effectively, improve quality of life and reduce the day-to-day impact of long-term conditions through personalised rehabilitation, education and behavioural support.
The programme has been developed by a combination of rehabilitation healthcare specialists, wider experts and patients ensuring it is clinically robust, user-centred and addressing real patient needs.
The University Hospitals of Leicester’s Pulmonary and Cardiac Rehabilitation teams bring over 10 years of experience delivering successful web-based programmes including Activate Your Heart, SPACE for COPD, and Your Covid Recovery. Research shows these programmes increase users’ knowledge of their condition, improve exercise performance, and enhance overall quality of life.
I-IMPACT is accessible across mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop devices, ensuring flexible and inclusive access for patients. 
Key features and functionality
Exercise and personalised rehabilitation
following an individualised assessment with healthcare professional users receive a tailored exercise programme matched to their ability and symptoms. Users have the ability to
- Set and achieve weekly activity targets
- Record and track exercise progress over time
- Monitor improvements in confidence, fitness, and wellbeing
- Receive guidance on safely progressing their activity
Symptom trackers
Users can also record and monitor symptoms weekly helping patients understand changes in their condition over time. The tracker supports awareness of symptom patterns and signposts users to relevant advice and self-management support.
Educational resources
The programme includes a comprehensive library of educational content to help users better understand their condition and manage symptoms, including:
Condition-specific education (medications, disease understanding, symptom management)
Lifestyle guidance such as healthy eating, staying active, and daily routine planning
Practical tools to support long-term self-management
Goals and motivation
Users can set personalised goals to support motivation, symptom control and lifestyle change with tools and resources to help track progress and maintain engagement.
Ask a Healthcare Professional
A built-in messaging function allows users to contact their local rehabilitation team directly providing timely clinical advice, reassurance and ongoing support.
How the Health Innovation Hub is supporting scale and growth
The ambition for I-IMPACT is to scale from a successful local programme into a regionally and nationally adopted digital rehabilitation pathway embedded as a sustainable, evidence-based solution for long-term condition management across the NHS.
The Health Innovation Hub is actively supporting this scale-up by working closely with clinical teams, academic partners, and industry stakeholders to strengthen, expand and commercialise the innovation. Our current support focuses on building the clinical, regulatory and commercial foundations required for growth, including:
- supporting clinical evaluation and impact evidence generation
- strengthening the Quality Management System (QMS) and regulatory readiness
- supporting MHRA compliance and governance frameworks
- developing a sustainable commercial and licensing model
- securing funding to support expansion and wider adoption
- building regional and national partnerships to accelerate rollout
- increasing NHS and industry engagement to support long-term scale
In order to scale the Health Innovation Hub is working with partners to grow and expand this innovation, ensuring it achieves meaningful regional and national impact while delivering measurable benefits for patients, clinicians, and the wider health system.
Visit the i-IMPACT website for more information.
Smart Scalpel UK is an award-winning surgical education innovation led by University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust designed to enhance surgical training through ethically governed, simulation-based video learning. The project uses anonymised surgical footage with informed patient consent, dual-surgeon commentary and clearly defined learning objectives to bridge the gap between real-world operative experience and trainee education.
Since August 2024, Smart Scalpel UK has produced 10 high-quality training videos supported by a structured feedback framework that enables continuous improvement, reflective learning and portfolio development for trainees.
Feedback demonstrates 100% perceived usefulness and 90% reported influence on clinical practice highlighting impact on confidence, competence and patient safety.
The innovation has received national and international recognition including First Place at the Midlands Simulations Conference (2025), the Innovation in Education Award at the UHL Educator Awards (2025) and international showcasing at FIGO 2025.
How the Health Innovation Hub is supporting scale and growth
The Health Innovation Hub is supporting Smart Scalpel UK in scaling from a successful local innovation into a wider regional, national and international education platform. Working alongside clinical teams and strategic partners, the Hub is providing hands-on support across funding, branding, communications, engagement and commercial development.
Current support includes:
- supporting brand development, launch planning and content strategy to strengthen visibility and adoption
- creating a structured communications and engagement plan to reach clinicians, trainees, partners and national stakeholders
- developing digital content, case studies and impact storytelling to build credibility and awareness
- supporting early-stage funding applications and investment opportunities
- connecting regional, academic, NHS and industry partners to enable scale
- supporting commercial strategy development, licensing pathways and sustainability planning
- coordinating stakeholder engagement and relationship-building to accelerate uptake
- working alongside partners to shape a scalable delivery model that enables wider rollout
Oxford Medical Simulation (OMS) is a global leader in virtual reality (VR) medical education, delivering immersive, scenario-based training that helps clinicians practise complex clinical situations in a safe, realistic environment. OMS VR enables junior doctors and clinical teams to develop decision-making, communication, leadership and clinical confidence by simulating high-pressure scenarios such as acutely unwell patients, cardiac emergencies and escalation of care without risk to real patients.
Research shows that VR-based simulation improves clinical confidence, knowledge retention, and decision-making under pressure and patient safety outcomes. Immersive training has also been shown to increase learner engagement, accelerate skills acquisition and offer a scalable, cost-effective alternative to traditional simulation training.
Innovation background and relaunch journey
OMS VR was previously launched within the organisation as an innovation to support junior doctor training and received strong early feedback. However, delivery was paused due to funding constraints, limiting its ability to scale and embed long-term.
Recognising the value and impact of the programme, the Health Innovation Hub stepped in to support funding recovery and prelaunch. The Hub has helped secure funding and is now working in close partnership with Oxford Medical Simulation and clinical education teams to launch in the coming months and expand VR training across the organisation.
How the Health Innovation Hub is supporting scale and growth
The Health Innovation Hub is actively supporting the relaunch, expansion and scalability of OMS VR by:
Securing and coordinating funding to restart and sustain delivery
Working in partnership with Oxford Medical Simulation to increase outreach and scalability
Supporting programme planning, rollout, and operational delivery
Supporting communications, awareness, and engagement campaigns to drive uptake
Capturing impact data, feedback, and evaluation outcomes to support future scale
Developing a sustainable and scalable delivery model for long-term regional expansion
Future ambition
The ambition is to scale OMS VR from a junior doctor training programme into a trust-wide immersive training platform for clinical staff in the long term supporting multidisciplinary workforce development, patient safety and system resilience. The Health Innovation Hub aims to embed VR simulation as a core component of modern clinical education, with future potential to expand across specialties, partner organisations, and the wider region.
Visit the Oxford Medical Simulation website for more information.