MedAscend Wins Innovate UK Women in Innovation Award

Fifth-year medical student and MedAscend co-founder Hana Woods has been named a winner of Innovate UK's 2026 Women in Innovation Awards, making her one of only two grant-funded winners based in Scotland this year.

Hana has received a £52,500 Innovate UK grant for a 12-month development project that will help MedAscend expand its AI-powered clinical simulation platform and prepare it for deployment across more healthcare education institutions.

MedAscend enables healthcare students and professionals to practise realistic clinical conversations and decision-making with AI-generated patients, relatives and colleagues. Learners can interact by voice or video, complete clinical tasks and receive structured feedback on their performance.

The platform was created in response to a challenge Hana and her co-founder, Ahmed, encountered firsthand during medical training: students need repeated opportunities to practise clinical conversations and decision making, but access can be limited by pressure on placements, educator availability, simulation facilities and trained patient actors.

Alongside communication practice, MedAscend can simulate patient records, observations, investigations, prescribing and documentation tasks, allowing learners to work through a clinical encounter from initial assessment to decision-making and follow-up. It can be used across medicine, nursing, pharmacy, midwifery and other healthcare disciplines.

The Innovate UK funding will support additional engineering and software development, specialist clinical education input and the technical infrastructure required to make the platform available to more learners and institutions.

Hana Woods, co-founder and COO of MedAscend and a fifth-year medical student, said:

I still remember the gap between being taught how to speak to a patient and actually having to do it for the first time, without a rehearsal or a safety net.

That gap is where students can lose confidence, and it is becoming harder to close as placement capacity, simulated patient availability and educator time all come under increasing pressure.

We built MedAscend so that every learner can practise the conversations and decisions that matter, make mistakes safely and try again before they are responsible for a real patient.

Being recognised as one of only two grant-funded Women in Innovation winners in Scotland is a huge personal honour. More importantly, this funding will help us build the engineering and clinical capacity required to take an already validated platform into more healthcare institutions and reach considerably more learners.

The award follows a period of growth for the Dundee-founded company. MedAscend was recently featured on BBC Tech Now and has separately become a three-time Scottish EDGE winner.

Women in Innovation Awards mark tenth anniversary

Innovate UK's Women in Innovation programme is marking its tenth anniversary in 2026 with its largest cohort to date.

Read the full Innovate UK press release: https://www.ukri.org/news/innovate-uk-backs-100-women-shaping-the-uks-future-industries/

The programme received a record 1,590 applications. One hundred women entrepreneurs have been recognised across the wider cohort, including 61 grant-funded award winners who will each receive funding of up to £75,000.

Grant recipients also receive 12 months of tailored business support, alongside training, networking and role-modelling opportunities designed to help women-led companies grow and scale.

Since the programme launched in 2016, the Women in Innovation Awards have supported hundreds of women entrepreneurs and helped build a community of more than 11,000 women business leaders.

Emily Nott, Head of Inclusive Innovation at Innovate UK, said:

Huge congratulations to everyone recognised in this year's Women in Innovation Awards. Reaching the 10th anniversary of the programme with record levels of engagement demonstrates the extraordinary talent, unstoppable ambition, and groundbreaking innovation being developed by women across the UK.

Whether named as an award winner or highly commended applicant, each member of this cohort is working towards delivering significant economic and social impact for the nation through innovation. We are proud to support these inspiring founders as they navigate the critical growth stages ahead and to create pathways for more women-led businesses to become industry giants of the future.

Tom Adeyoola, Executive Chair of Innovate UK, said:

This year's Women in Innovation cohort represents some of the UK's most exciting entrepreneurial talent. These founders are developing the ideas, technologies and businesses that will drive economic growth, attract investment, and tackle some of the world's biggest challenges.

Many of today's most successful companies started with a bold idea and the right support at the right time. Through Women in Innovation, we are backing founders with the ambition, talent, and determination to develop the UK's most promising companies. Many congratulations to every member of this exceptional cohort.