A programme plugging gaps in UK care provision was tonight named “Technology Innovation Champion” at the 2025 Innovation Awards.
Wolverhampton-based Bronze Labs were presented with the prestigious accolade, after a year-long process of voting and judging, at a finale awards dinner attended by 500 people at Eastside Rooms in Birmingham.
The firm’s Tribe Project, which is run from Telford in Shropshire, is harnessing the power of AI to address gaps in community provision before they become crises.
On track to generate more than 1,000 new care businesses
The digital framework empowers individuals with the training and support to build sustainable care enterprises, unlocking opportunity where it is needed most.
Already on track to generate over one thousand new businesses, Tribe is restoring care, rebuilding communities, and working to permanently end inequality in health and care.
The panel of Innovation Awards judges were struck by the Tribe Project’s data-driven, AI-enabled approach to restoring care choice and connecting providers – a UKRI-backed social tech programme with clear practical impact.
Filling care ‘dark patches’ by enabling local people
This project combines predictive digital mapping of care “dark patches,” areas where home-care provision is currently failing or absent, with community-led micro-enterprise creation, enabling local people in low-economic-activity, high-need areas to train and become care providers themselves.
The initiative turns citizens into providers by creating new, hyper-local, scalable care ecosystems. By co-designing the platform with users and blending technology and people power, it shifts away from traditional care packages towards a dynamic, locally rooted service model that aligns demand and supply, invests in community assets and challenges the status quo of the care industry.
Innovation Awards are open to businesses, organisations and individuals across the UK
Dr Richard Fallon, CEO of the Technology Supply Chain (TSC) membership organisation, which runs the annual Innovation Awards, said: “Congratulations to Bronze Labs. We had more entries than ever before this year, and the competition for each category was stronger than it’s ever been.
“Each winner can be justifiably proud and can look forward to ongoing support from the 5,000-member TSC network as they chart their course to future success.”
The Innovation Awards recognise, celebrate and reward the businesses, organisations and individuals who are dedicated to innovation.
The awards are open to innovative individuals, businesses and organisations – including universities, local councils and catapults – based in the UK.
