For UK HealthTech companies
Your pilot worked. The next trust still will not commit.
NHS buyers need structured evidence, clinical outcomes, cost savings, and a credible business case, not internal metrics. Without that translation, a proven pilot can stall for a year or more and defer a substantial sum in contract value.
Two minutes. Solva follows up with specific evidence packaging options.
- Successful pilots failing to convert into wider adoption or commercial contracts.
- Healthtech companies struggling to articulate their value beyond clinical benefits.
- NHS procurement teams rejecting solutions due to insufficient or poorly presented evidence.
- Significant investment in R&D and pilot projects yielding limited return on investment.
- Delayed or stalled market entry for innovative healthtech solutions.
- Inefficient resource allocation within healthtech companies due to repeated, unsuccessful sales cycles.
- Loss of potential revenue and market share for healthtech companies.
- Wasted investment in product development and pilot projects.
- Delayed patient access to potentially life-changing or efficiency-improving health technologies.
- Suboptimal patient outcomes due to slower adoption of innovations.
- Damage to the healthtech company's credibility and ability to attract future investment.
- Negative perception of healthtech innovations within the NHS due to perceived lack of robust evidence.
- The root causes stem from a fundamental mismatch between healthtech companies' internal success metrics and the NHS's procurement requirements for robust, externally validated real-world evidence.
- This is compounded by a lack of understanding of NHS commissioning cycles and the need to translate clinical efficacy into economic value propositions.
3 in 10 healthtech companies reported that lack of real-world evidence packaging was the primary reason NHS trusts declined to proceed after a successful pilot. (ABHI, 2024)
Source: https://www.abhi.org.uk/media/fvhmxqbi/2024-pulse-of-healthtech-survey.pdf
How to fix it
Commission a structured case study from your pilot site with a named clinical lead, quantified outcomes (time saved, cost per episode, patient satisfaction), and a replication framework. Package as a one-page summary and a full evidence dossier for procurement teams.
Frequently asked questions
Why does this problem persist?
NHS buyers require real-world evidence before committing to a contract. Pilot data is often presented as internal metrics rather than as a structured business case with clinical outcomes, cost savings, and implementation timelines. The gap between a good pilot and a scalable contract is almost always a marketing and communication problem.
What is the cost of leaving it unaddressed?
Each failed scale-up from a successful pilot represents 12–18 months of wasted sales effort and typically £150,000–£400,000 in deferred contract value. (ABHI, 2024)
This is exactly what I do with UK private practices. Answer the few questions above and I'll come back personally with where to start. Paul.