Innovator Spotlight: Richard Howells
NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) Fellow, Richard Howells, who has recently been honoured with an OBE for his outstanding services to Business, Technology, and Innovation, founded The Tribe Project to address care inequality and to close gaps in care provision. Driven by personal experience of sourcing care for his own family, Richard set out to develop a platform to improve access to community care.
The challenge
In England 1.5 million people eligible for care support are struggling to access any at all. This shortfall in community provision causes delays in patients being discharged from hospital, costing the NHS an estimated £1.7 billion annually. There is also a significant cost to the economy, with unpaid care in England and Wales estimated to be £162 billion.
The Tribe solution
The Tribe Project restores choice and control to individuals seeking care, whilst offering an economically sustainable model for commissioners and wider health provision in the UK by identifying potential blackspots of care provision, or capacity constraints, and addressing these. This supports the NHS agenda of moving care from hospital to community and from sickness to prevention.
Tribe provides an evidence-based approach that leverages community demand to drive local economic development, generating sustainable, high-quality employment and contributing to increased GDP in disadvantaged regions.
By empowering small community-based businesses to join Tribe and become micro-enterprises, users can find services in their area and build a bespoke package tailored to their needs, with booking and payment all managed in the Tribe portal.
Users can search for a range of paid and volunteer services, including health and care support within their home, meal preparation, cleaning services, or even a friendly volunteer to pop round for a cup of tea and a chat.
Proven impact
This model has been extraordinarily successful, creating hundreds of businesses with the capacity to support thousands of people in their homes, thereby reducing barriers to patient discharge in local hospitals and supporting one of the Government’s NHS big shifts, ‘hospital to community’, which aims to bring care closer to where people live.
In Essex, Tribe has already delivered:
- Over 5,300 hours of care per week through 100+ micro-providers
- Support for more than 1,000 people
- £5.9 million in net economic impact, including avoided hospital admissions and reduced delayed discharges
- £4.5 million in social value, including job creation and retention
- £3.92 saved per hour for those funding their own care.
Stephen Watt, Adult Social Care Commissioner for Essex said; “The Tribe platform has created an opportunity to offer real and genuine choice to people who are purchasing care and support. It has reduced the barriers to entry for people who want to offer support to their community. This has increased capacity within the market and created an ecosystem of support that has improved access to good quality, personalised care and support.”
Tribe in the West Midlands
Health Innovation West Midlands is delighted to be continuing to support Richard and The Tribe Project on this year’s NIA Fellowship programme, which is delivered in partnership with the Health Innovation Network and provides expert guidance, peer support and access to a network of key stakeholders in healthcare, helping to equip innovators to scale their solutions and drive real-world impact.
Judith Stewart, Director of Economic, Commercial and Business Development at Health Innovation West Midlands said, “The Tribe Project is more than a digital platform – it is a transformative model for community care. By restoring dignity, choice, and connection to those in need, it empowers individuals and communities alike. We are proud to support an innovation that places people at the heart of care delivery.”
Richard Howells, The Tribe Project, Founder said, “In the year up to June 2024 the West Midlands recorded 434,634 instances of delayed discharge from hospital, at a cost of £171,680,430 in bed days per annum. With a scalable, cost-effective model and a track record of success, our evaluation indicates that the additional system capacity Tribe could produce in the West Midlands, will provide support for 5,341 people and reduce delayed discharge bed days by 4,064 in the first year, increasing year on year.
The Tribe Project is a CIC committed to reinvesting any profit back into the community, we support the growth of new businesses which help to fill the gaps in care provision and ensure families have choice and control over the support they receive.”
National recognition for The Tribe Project
November 2025: Bronze Labs and The Tribe Project were named Technology Innovation Champion at the 2025 Innovation Awards.
June 2025: Founder Richard Howells awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours for his outstanding services to Business, Technology, and Innovation.
July 2024: The Tribe Project was included in Skills for Care’s National Workforce Strategy; as an example of a project successfully coordinating the care workforce to the needs of local residents.
2023: The Tribe Project was recognised by the World Health Organisation as one of the top ten global innovations in healthy ageing.
2021: The Tribe Project won the British Industrial Strategy: “Ageing Grand Challenge”. Founded by a cross parliamentary group, the purpose of the challenge was to find viable solutions to major challenges facing our health and care systems.
If you would like to get involved with The Tribe Project, please contact: support@tribeproject.org