Beyond Returns

How Impact Investing is bringing investors and charities into the same Innovation space

Healthcare innovation is increasingly being driven both by investors and charities. Some traditional investors, once focused almost exclusively on financial returns, some investors are now demanding demonstrable social impact. Some charities, long accustomed to grant‑based funding cycles, are seeking new ways to ensure donor capital delivers sustainable, scalable change.

Impact investing sits at the centre of this convergence. Nowhere is this more visible than in Medtech, where the alignment of financial discipline, social mission, and measurable outcomes is creating a new model for how healthcare innovation is funded and delivered. The two worlds are not merely moving closer together; they are beginning to operate within a shared framework of accountability, evidence, and long‑term value creation.

Two Worlds Moving Toward Each Other

Traditional investors are shifting their expectations. The old venture capital model — back a promising technology, aim for a lucrative exit — is no longer sufficient for a growing segment of investors. Some investors want to know who benefits, whether inequity is reduced, and how lives are improved at scale. Impact is no longer a ‘nice to have’; it is a core investment criterion for some funds.

Meanwhile, charities are rethinking how they use capital. NGOs and philanthropic organisations are confronting the limitations of traditional grant funding: short cycles, limited scalability, dependence on annual fundraising, and difficulty sustaining innovation beyond pilot stages. To break this pattern, leading charities are turning to impact investment vehicles, venture philanthropy, and innovative finance. Their goal is simple: ensure donor funds create durable, systemic change rather than one‑off interventions.

The convergence is unmistakable: both groups are now meeting in the same space — a shared desire for measurable, long‑term, scalable impact. This alignment is not theoretical; it is reshaping how capital flows into healthcare innovation.

Redefining Success: A Shared Language of Impact

The convergence between investors and charities has forced a fundamental redefinition of what ‘success’ looks like in Medtech and wider health innovation. Investors increasingly use frameworks such as IRIS+ to assess outcomes, beneficiaries, scale of change, contribution, and risk. At the same time, charities are adopting similarly rigorous approaches, moving beyond simple outputs to focus on real‑world clinical outcomes, health equity, system‑level change, long‑term cost savings, and community empowerment.

This shift has been shaped by more than a decade of experimentation. A pivotal early example was the Wellcome Trust’s creation of Syncona, which demonstrated that a charity could build commercially successful life‑science companies while generating returns to strengthen its long‑term mission. Syncona showed that philanthropic capital could drive early‑stage innovation, attract mainstream investors, and embed new technologies within health systems — not as pilots, but as sustainable, scalable solutions.

Other organisations reached similar conclusions. The Fred Hollows Foundation realised that funding one‑off eye‑care camps could never meet global need; investing in local manufacturing of low‑cost intraocular lenses enabled national systems to deliver cataract surgery at scale. In education, BRAC moved from donor‑funded pilot schools to investing in social enterprises that train teachers and supply affordable learning materials across entire regions. In humanitarian settings, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) pioneered humanitarian impact bonds to finance long‑term rehabilitation centres, ensuring continuity of care long after traditional grants would have ended.

Together, these examples helped establish a shared understanding: innovations only achieve lasting impact when they are embedded within systems, not left as isolated pilots. Investment vehicles provide the mechanism to scale, sustain, and institutionalise these solutions.

As a result, both investors and charities are now speaking a common language — evidence, outcomes, and accountability. This shared vocabulary is enabling collaborations that would have been unthinkable a decade ago and is reshaping how capital flows into healthcare innovation.

Save the Children’s Impact Fund: A New Model for Sustainable Child‑Focused Innovation

The convergence between investors and charities is exemplified by Save the Children’s creation of its global impact investment arm, Save the Children Global Ventures (SCGV) and their Children’s Impact Multiplier Funds. These funds were established in response to a structural challenge: traditional grants, while vital, often struggle to scale proven innovations or sustain them beyond short project cycles. SCGV was designed to bridge this gap by mobilising patient, risk‑tolerant capital that can accelerate solutions for children in ways philanthropy alone cannot.

Its investment framework blends commercial discipline with a rigorous child‑lens approach, assessing opportunities not only for financial viability but for their potential to improve children’s health, safety, education, and resilience at scale. Investments are evaluated against clear criteria — accessibility, equity, scalability, sustainability, and measurable outcomes — ensuring that donor‑aligned capital is deployed in ways that generate both social and financial returns. This model allows Save the Children to recycle returns into future innovation, creating a perpetual engine for impact rather than a one‑off grant cycle.

This is precisely why the investment in Amparo Prosthetics is so powerful— it demonstrates how a charity‑aligned impact fund can deploy capital in a way that meets investor expectations while transforming lives.

The Amparo Prosthetics Example: Convergence in Action

Amparo Prosthetics offers one of the clearest demonstrations of how impact investing can unlock solutions that are both commercially scalable and socially transformative. British based and now operating globally, Amparo developed a direct‑fit, thermoplastic prosthetic socket that can be moulded directly onto a patient’s residual limb and remoulded multiple times as their residual limb changes. This is particularly critical for children, whose growth often requires repeated refitting — something that traditional prosthetic systems struggle to accommodate affordably or quickly.

Globally, some sources estimate as many as 40 million people require prosthetic or orthotic devices, yet only 1 in 10 currently has access. In conflict‑affected regions, the need is even more acute: explosive weapons, crush injuries, and delayed access to emergency care have created a surge in traumatic amputations. In Gaza alone, Save the Children estimates that 3,000–4,000 children may require prosthetic or long‑term rehabilitation support as a result of recent conflict.

Traditional prosthetic care is almost impossible to deliver in these environments. It typically requires multiple clinic visits over several weeks, specialist technicians, fixed facilities, and expensive rigid sockets that cannot be adjusted. For displaced families or those living in insecure areas, these barriers are insurmountable.

What makes Amparo’s technology transformative is that it solves these constraints through:- Portable fitting equipment suitable for remote or humanitarian settings- Same‑day fitting, reducing the need for repeated travel- Remouldable sockets that can be adjusted up to five times — ideal for growing children- Potentially delivering much better quality (without higher overall costs) when the costs of fitting are taken into account, as well as scope for remoulding - Reduced clinical infrastructure requirements, enabling local technicians to deliver care from mobile units

To date, Amparo has supported over 5,000 amputees across more than 55 countries, including low‑resource settings in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

In January 2026, Save the Children Global Ventures investment made an equity investment in Amparo through one of its Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund. This investment aims to accelerate Amparo’s mission to expand access to prosthetic care in underserved, humanitarian and conflict-affected settings, including for children from Gaza. This is not a grant; it is patient, catalytic capital intended to unlock commercial growth precisely because that growth expands access for underserved children.

Why this investment exemplifies impact investing

Amparo sits at the intersection of financial viability and deep social impact:

Impact Dimension	How Amparo Delivers
Accessibility	Brings prosthetic care to children in conflict‑affected regions
Equity	Reduces cost and logistical barriers for low‑income families
Scalability	Portable, low‑infrastructure model enables rapid expansion
Sustainability	Commercial revenue supports long‑term operations
Measurability	SCGV is embedding outcome tracking: mobility gains, school attendance, wellbeing

Amparo is a charity‑aligned investment that meets investor expectations for disciplined growth while fulfilling a humanitarian mission to restore mobility, dignity, and independence to children who have experienced life‑altering trauma.

The New Hybrid Model: Financial Discipline Meets Social Mission

The convergence is producing a new hybrid model of healthcare innovation funding, characterised by collaborative risk‑sharing, longer time horizons, integrated impact measurement, and system‑level thinking. This model rewards technologies designed for real‑world impact, not just commercial potential.

Conclusion: A New Era of Shared Purpose

The convergence between traditional investors and charities is redefining what healthcare innovation can achieve. By blending financial discipline with social mission, and by demanding rigorous measurement of both, impact investing is creating a new model for sustainable, scalable change.

The examples of Save the Children’s Impact Multiplier Fund and Amparo Prosthetics show that the most transformative innovations emerge when capital is deployed not just to generate returns, but to reshape lives, systems, and societies.