The Health Innovation Accelerator has been established to improve the diagnosis and treatment of disease across the 2.8m Greater Manchester population. The Accelerator encompasses two projects, the Advanced Diagnostics Accelerator and the DEVOTE programme, delivered through a partnership between Health Innovation Manchester, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), The University of Manchester, and industry partners.

Through these programmes of work, the Accelerator is addressing several diseases including liver, heart and lung disease, by using academic, clinical and industry excellence to better understand data, digital tools and innovative point of care testing to improve health outcomes for patients.

Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) is a key component of the Accelerator, with the overall aim of empowering the public to engage in focus group discussions, co-creation sessions, creative campaign design, peer led interviews and observing people in their own environment to understand their experiences, perspectives and everyday practices.

This approach amplifies the voice of these communities enabling them to share their lived experience. By doing so, the programme and our local health and care system can gain valuable insights to improve access and uptake of advanced and community-based diagnostics amongst underserved groups moving forward.

Engaging with communities across Greater Manchester – our work with the LGBT Foundation Pride in Ageing programme

As part of the continued public and community engagement work that is being undertaken as part of the Health Innovation Accelerator programme, Health Innovation Manchester invited members of the LGBT Foundation Pride in Ageing programme to share their thoughts and experiences of engaging with the healthcare system.

The LGBT Foundation Pride in Ageing programme creates empowering events and opportunities for LGBTQ+ people over the age of 50 years old. The programme was established to address concerns that too many members of this community over the age of 50 are living in isolation and facing discrimination as a direct result of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

These conversations focussed on potential ways to increase engagement within the LGBTQ+ community in terms of access to NHS screening, and in raising awareness of health risks associated with prevalent diseases across Greater Manchester.

Through conversation and active listening with members, Health Innovation Manchester was able to better understand lived experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, including needs, and perspectives on how the health and care system can better engage with its diverse communities across the city-region.

“We believe that there are opportunities to provide healthcare screening within community settings. So, for example one thing that LGBT Foundation would love to provide is things like heart pressure monitoring, weight monitoring or simple diagnostics, where people feel comfortable in an environment or a setting that’s familiar. This means that we’re able to capture communities of identity and patients who have previously been hesitant to access healthcare services in the past.”

Nicky Timmis, Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement Manager at Health Innovation Manchester, said: “Our work across the Health Innovation Accelerator is all about tackling health inequalities and improving the diagnosis and treatment of disease across Greater Manchester. However, to make this meaningful we need to include the patient groups and communities at greatest risk of disease and where there is low uptake of NHS screening opportunities.

“The focus of our public involvement and engagement work across this programme has enabled us to gather insights so we can better understand the experiences of local people around access to healthcare and screening, including amongst members of the Pride in Ageing group. By engaging with group members and hearing about their individual and collective experiences, this will help us influence change and improve access to healthcare support, screening and signposting as we continue to work across the Accelerator programme and beyond.

“This type of community engagement is all about empowering our communities, so that the lived experience of local people can influence positive change across the Greater Manchester health and social care system.”

The Health Innovation Accelerator

The Health Innovation Accelerator encompasses two projects, the Advanced Diagnostics Accelerator and the DEVOTE programme, delivered through a partnership between Health Innovation Manchester, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), The University of Manchester, and industry partners.

This project is part-funded by the Greater Manchester Innovation Accelerator programme. Led by Innovate UK on behalf of UK Research and Innovation, the pilot Innovation Accelerator programme invested £100m in 26 transformative R&D projects between 2022-25 to accelerate the growth of three high-potential innovation ecosystems – Glasgow City Region, Greater Manchester and West Midlands. The programme was boosted by an additional £30m of public funding for 2025/26 spread equally across the regions. Innovation Accelerators are piloting a new model of R&D decision making that empowers local partnerships to harness innovation to drive regional economic growth, attract private investment, and develop future technologies.