In 1987, Margot Grey, a psychologist who had had a personal near death experience, set up The International Association of Near Death Studies (UK), with links to a charity with the same name in the United States, to help promote better understanding of the near death experience phenomenon in the UK. Although active in the 1980's, throughout the 1990's this organisation became less active, until March 2000, when it was renamed. Since then the work of Horizon and the scientific research of its doctors has received extensive national and international press coverage.

Today, Horizon Research Foundation is a separate and independent charitable organisation that aims to provide support for scientific research and understanding into the state of the human mind at the end of life. We aim to do this by raising funds for high quality scientific projects, and provide various educational tools such as lectures, conferences and information booklets for the public and healthcare professionals. However due to limited resources and being run entirely on a volunteer basis, since 2003, we have had to reduce our administrative work. We hope that we may be able to expand our work again in the near future; but at present we are unable to run our membership program and are only able to provide resources through the internet.