Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been awarded £1.5m in capital research infrastructure funding to enable more patients across the region to benefit from research.

The investment from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) will support four initiatives, including the purchase of equipment and expansion of the trust’s digital infrastructure.

It is intended to drive further collaboration between academic and industry partners, streamline the delivery of innovative clinical trials, and enable the trust to  develop more treatments.

Dr Magnus Harrison, chief medical officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, said: “This funding means we can accelerate innovation, expand research capacity and enhance our technology so that patients benefit sooner from the latest breakthroughs.

“The trust is a world-leading centre for excellence, and these initiatives demonstrate how we’re already delivering against the NHS 10 year health plan by ensuring our research and innovation enables more communities to benefit from life-changing research which supports prevention and accelerates the adoptions of digital and AI.

“Together with our partners across academia and industry, this additional investment will allow us to expand our research and create the right environment for world-class clinical studies, so we support today’s challenges and transforming the healthcare of the future.”

The investment will cover the expansion of the trust’s digital infrastructure to develop and validate AI imaging algorithms aimed at improving diagnostic accuracy and clinical decision making across major disease areas.

It will also deliver critical infrastructure to support a new simulated surgical operating suite to evaluate the environmental impacts of surgical innovations.

The facility, based at Leeds General Infirmary, will be equipped with equipment to accelerate the development, evaluation and deployment of greener surgery technologies across the NHS.

NIHR’s investment will enable the trust to purchase a HistoSonics non-invasive platform, expanding its use of the radiation-free cancer treatment histotripsy and advancing research into new cancer therapies.

It will also be used to fund equipment to evaluate a new AI-enabled handheld cardiac ultrasound device to speed up heart failure diagnosis in GP practices, supporting research delivered by the NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre and NIHR Leeds Clinical Research Facility.

Professor Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care and chief executive at the NIHR, said: “This significant investment will provide the NHS with the high-quality equipment and facilities it needs to deliver cutting-edge commercial research that benefits the public.”

The award is part of national funding which saw the NIHR award £47.8 million to pay for equipment to streamline the delivery of clinical trials.

It is funded by the Voluntary Branded Medicines Pricing, Access and Growth Investment Programme, a partnership between the government and the pharmaceutical industry designed to boost the global competitiveness of the UK life sciences sector.

The new equipment and infrastructure is expected to be in place at Leeds in summer 2026.