Incubators
The NIHR Incubators have been established to support capacity building and multidisciplinary career development in priority areas where critical mass is low.
Incubators are virtual, managed across multiple sites and organised by discipline. They provide targeted high level career development support, led by experts in the field and supported by the NIHR Academy.
The Strategic Review of Training report highlighted a number of challenges and set out a series of recommendations which included the creation of the Incubators, as well as plans for new training programmes that could address NIHR priorities and new initiatives that would develop research capacity in strategically important areas.
This initiative aims to encourage early career interest in target disciplines to build identifiable communities through networking and provision of bespoke training and development support.
NIHR Incubators are being piloted and make the most of existing opportunities - by building on structures that already exist (the NIHR Schools), by working in partnership to support new and emerging disciplines or by being community led in areas where capacity is particularly low. Incubators are bespoke to meet the needs of each area and are developing at different paces.
Current NIHR Incubators include:
- Social Care Incubator
- Public Health Incubator
- Incubator in Health Data Science (in partnership with HDR UK)
- Emergency Care Incubator
- Nursing and Midwifery Incubator
- Incubator for Mental Health Research
- Methodology Incubator
- Incubator for Clinical Education Research
- Advanced Surgical Technology Incubator
In addition to the NIHR Incubators, the NIHR is piloting one regional approach called the WESSEX REACH Initiative. REACH was created to facilitate the development of the future generation of health and care-related researchers across a range of disciplines and specialties in the Wessex region.
Applying to become an NIHR Incubator
Currently NIHR Academy has reached maximum capacity in terms of the number of incubators we can support. Details of any future competitions will be announced on the NIHR website.
Further Information
If you wish to receive more information about existing incubators please contact us via at icbs@nihr.ac.uk.