The Health Innovation West Midlands’s Meridian Innovation Exchange platform has received ideasUK gold accreditation for the third year running. Despite a challenging year for the health and life sciences sector due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are proud to have kept our standards high and improved upon last year’s scores.

The accreditation process subjects innovation programmes to an external assessment by ideasUK, followed by a report providing guidance on areas of strength and where to focus improvements.

There are four levels of accreditation:

• Platinum
• Gold
• Silver
• Bronze

The accreditation is an annual process, with each review lasting one year from completion of the visit. There is a formal certificate, normally awarded at the ideasUK Annual conference held each November.

The end to end review consists of 50 questions developed as a result of ideasUK’s long history working with innovation programmes and as of 2020 is now aligned to BS ISO 56002 to provide an added level of validity.

While Meridian was awarded gold overall, elements of the programme have now moved into the platinum category. With ambitious plans for the year ahead, we’re dedicated to working hard to achieve platinum status in 2021.