Our membership and engagement is coordinated by the NIHR Coordinating Centre (NIHRCC).
NIHR’s mission is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research.

History and Structure

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) was established in 2006 to “create a health research system in which the NHS supports outstanding individuals, working in world-class facilities, conducting leading-edge research focused on the needs of patients and the public”.

Since that time, we have transformed research in and for the NHS and helped to shape the health and social care research landscape more broadly.
Working in partnership with the NHS, universities, local government, other research funders, patients and the public, we fund, enable and deliver world-leading health and social care research that improves people’s health and wellbeing and promotes economic growth.

We are funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. Our work focuses on early translational research, clinical research and applied health and social care research.

We are centred on England but collaborate closely with the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We are also a major funder of applied health research in low- and middle-income countries, work principally funded through UK aid from the UK government.

Mission

NIHR’s mission is to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research. We deliver this mission through 6 core workstreams:

  • We fund high quality, timely research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care.
  • We invest in world-class expertise, facilities and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services.
  • We partner with patient, service users, carers and communities improving the relevance, quality and impact of our research.
  • We attract, train and support the best researchers to tackle complex health and social care challenges.
  • We collaborate with other public funders, charities and industry to shape a cohesive and globally competitive research system.
  • We fund applied global health research and training to meet the needs of the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries.

How we work

NIHR has various funding programmes and initiatives, covering researcher-led and commissioned research and reviews, innovation, career development and infrastructure. Of particular relevance to the health technologies lifecycle are:

The NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme is the NIHR’s largest research evaluation programme, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care since 1993. The HTA Programme’s mission is to help provide high quality evidence to inform NHS decision making. It funds research about the clinical and cost-effectiveness, and broader impact of healthcare technologies, treatments and tests, for those who plan, provide or receive care from NHS and social care services.

The Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme funds ambitious studies evaluating technologies and interventions with potential to make a step-change in the promotion of health, treatment of disease and improvement of rehabilitation or long-term care. EME is a partnership between the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the NIHR.

The Evidence Synthesis Programme funds research projects that identify, evaluate and combine data from existing research studies to provide best evidence, including on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of technologies, treatments, tests and other interventions, to support decision-making across health, public health and social care.

The NIHR Innovation Observatory (IO) is the home of health technology and innovation horizon scanning. Established at Newcastle University, UK, in 2017, the IO is an active research centre with a focus on the provision of early awareness signals and access to timely intelligence to support national decision making around health care innovation.

The NIHR Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme is a translational research funding scheme aimed at medical devices, in vitro diagnostic devices and digital health technologies addressing an existing or emerging health or social care need.
More information about our funding programmes, schools, research units and libraries of published research can be found on our Funding research page.

Dissemination activities

From April 2025 NIHR will be moving to a new open access and publication model which is more equitable in supporting all NIHRs funded researchers and builds on new innovations. NIHR Journals Library is an open access resource, freely available online providing a permanent record of NIHR-funded research to April 2025. This includes Health Technology Assessment (HTA) journal series (1997-2025) with an impact factor of 3.6 and is ranked 32nd (out of 105 titles) in the ‘Health Care Sciences & Services’ category of the Clarivate 2022 Journal Citation Reports (Science Edition).

NIHR Open Research enables all NIHR funded researchers to make openly available the findings of their projects not published elsewhere. It enables researchers to publish any research they wish to share, supporting reproducibility, transparency and impact. It uses an open research publishing model: publication within days of submission, followed by open invited peer review and includes citations to all supporting data, enabling reanalyses, replication and reuse.

NIHR Evidence adds value to existing research outputs by selecting the most important findings and making them easy to digest. It provides summaries of single studies and collections of research on specific topics, to help inform decisions made by the public, health or care professionals, commissioners or policy makers.

Current Projects (A Selection)

A complete list of NIHR’s active funded portfolio of awards, including NIHR’s HTA programme portfolio and others, can be found on NIHR Open Data along with key statistics on NIHR’s funded portfolio.

Future plans

NIHR continuously innovates in order to deliver against our mission of improving the health and wealth of the nation through research. Alongside our core workstreams, the NIHR has identified areas where the environment is changing and where we need to work with urgency and in markedly different ways if we are to tackle the health and social challenges facing people and communities today.

In these areas of strategic focus, we aim to deliver transformative change over the next five to ten years:

  • Build on learnings from the research response to COVID-19 and support the recovery of the health and social care system.
  • Build capacity and capability in preventative, public health and social care research.
  • Improve the lives of people with multiple long-term conditions through research.
  • Bring clinical and applied research to under-served regions and communities with major health needs.
  • Embed equality, diversity and inclusion across NIHR’s research, systems and culture.
  • Strengthen careers for research delivery staff and under-represented disciplines and specialisms.
  • Expand our work with the life sciences industry to be at the forefront of new technologies and improve health and economic prosperity.
  • Reduce the carbon footprint of our organisation, and of the research system more broadly.

Agency Information

Country: United Kingdom
Description of population served: United Kingdom
Population served (mil): 67
Current HTA budget (mil USD): 209 (2022/23 expenditure for EME,HTA, ES and i4i programmes only)
Staff: 900 approx.
Consultants: variable
Ongoing TA projects: 649 (EME, HTA, i4i programmes only, ES active project data pending)

Contact Information

NIHR Coordinating Centre (Executive Directors: Lisa Cotterill, Lynn Kerridge, David King)
Contact person: Sally Bailey (HTA) and/or Dr Sarah Puddicombe (Global Health and International)

National Institute for Health Research Coordinating Centre
University of Southampton
Alpha House, Enterprise Road
Southampton SO16 7NS
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 238 0595 605
Internet: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/
Email: htafunding@nihr.ac.uk or international@nihr.ac.uk