The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is a United Kingdom government agency. It funds research into health and care and is the largest national clinical research funder in Europe.

The NIHR are primarily funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, but also receive UK Aid funding to support research for people in low- and middle-income countries.

The NIHR invests significantly in people, centres of excellence, collaborations, services and facilities to support health and care research. Collectively these form the NIHR infrastructure. The NIHR’s commissioned research programmes offer a focused source of funding for researchers within the health system in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also participate in some of these programmes.

One part of the NIHR infrastructure are the 11 funded MedTech and in vitro diagnostics Co-operatives (MICs) – of which Newcastle is one.

Based in leading NHS organisations, the MICs act as centres of expertise and bring together patients, clinicians, researchers, commissioners and industry.

The MICs were launched in 2018 and receive substantial levels of sustained funding – £14 million over five years – to help develop new medical technologies and provide evidence on in vitro diagnostic tests.

The MICs can help to build a multi-disciplinary team that will work collaboratively with medical technology, device and diagnostic developers.

This ensures that developers generate the evidence they need to support adoption of their innovations in the NHS.

• Find out more about the NIHR
• Find out more about the NIHR MIC infrastructure
• Find out more about NIHR organisations in the region