Healthy Living and Agriculture Review 2025 - A focus on Healthy Lives

Foundations for lifelong health and wellbeing

To mark the launch of our Healthy Living and Agriculture Review we’re sharing a series of themed insights exploring the UK-wide impact of business-led innovation across our four core areas: AgriFood Systems, Healthy Lives, Health Tech, and Future Medicines.

There is a growing disparity between our ageing population and the length of time spent in good health. The UK faces a challenge in helping people to remain active, productive, independent, and socially connected for as long as possible.

Through our Healthy Lives programmes, Innovate UK is supporting innovators to come to market with products and services that help people look after their own health and wellbeing, to live a fulfilling life for longer. We are funding and supporting innovation that tackle issues including mental health, dementia, addiction, obesity and nutrition, occupational health, and social care.

From our earlier work through the Healthy Ageing Challenge, we’ve broadened our scope of our work to a whole-life course approach to ensure the foundations for lifelong health and wellbeing are laid early, and interventions made at every stage of life to prevent illness, reduce inequalities, and support healthier, more resilient communities.

Empower people with neurodegenerative conditions to live fulfilling, connected lives

With dementia cases globally predicted to triple by 2050, there is a great urgency to deal with this global health challenge. We’re accelerating innovations that support greater social connection, positive mental health and brain health for those living with neurodegenerative conditions.

One way we’re accelerating innovations to support people with early-stage dementia to live independently is through the Longitude Prize on Dementia. Working with the Alzheimer’s Society and Challenge Works, we’ve selected five finalists, including two from the UK, who are developing their solutions further ahead of the winner announcement in early 2026.

Accelerate, catalyse, and scale UK innovation that supports mental health

Through our Mindset extended reality (XR) for digital mental health programme, Innovate UK is backing pioneering projects that harness the potential of immersive technology to provide mental healthcare services.

XR Therapeutics, a spin-out from Newcastle University, has developed technology that combines traditional Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with graded exposure therapy, enhanced through the use of XR extended reality. Through Innovate UK funding they’ve expanded their team, scaled their operations and are now working across six NHS trusts, and secured over £900k in additional private equity investment.

Enable people to live independently and stay connected socially

The UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge, delivered by Innovate UK and ESRC, was central to our Healthy Lives activities. The Challenge has helped companies address the need for solutions to enable people to live safely within their own homes.

With Challenge funding, E.ON delivered and installed interventions in over 2,500 homes over three years, to tangibly improve older people’s lives, including stylish, discrete mobility aids, smart watches that monitor health and encourage activity, and smart speakers that connect them with services and loved ones digitally.

Support solutions that enhance proactive health management

Innovate UK supports projects that help adults stay active and engaged in their communities to reduce the risk of physical and mental health issues and keep them in fulfilling employment for longer.

With support from the Healthy Ageing Challenge, social enterprise Good Boost developed and scaled its AI-driven software to help people with musculoskeletal conditions improve strength, mobility, and quality of life. Their solution is now used in leisure centres, pools, and gyms across the UK and internationally.

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Discover how business-led innovation is delivering real impact in Healthy Lives and explore the full story behind these case studies.

Explore our other perspectives on AgriFood Systems, Health Tech, and Future Medicines.

If you think Innovate UK Business Connect can help you, or if you have any feedback on this review, please get in touch.