The Innovation Ecosystem report: a roadmap for the adoption and spread of innovation in the NHS

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The Innovation Ecosystem Programme (IEP), founded in 2023 with the aim of discovering how best to streamline development and adoption of innovations in the NHS, last week published its inaugural report.
The report was based on interviews and working group discussions with NHS workers, industry participants, academics and other stakeholders conducted over the past 18 months.
It summarises the IEP’s findings and presents a suite of recommended actions with the aim that it will contribute to the 10-Year Health Plan, the Innovation and Adoption Strategy and the Life Sciences Sector Plan.
Key Takeaways
Context: Why is this report needed?
One of the IEP’s key findings was a strong sense of optimism among stakeholders that the UK is well positioned to be a global leader in healthcare innovation. The NHS and UK life sciences companies have an impressive history of pioneering research and development which offers a solid foundation from which to launch further efforts in innovation.
Nevertheless, the report comes at what it describes as a “pivotal moment of risk and opportunity” for the NHS. With an ageing population and significant health inequalities putting pressure on both the NHS’s workforce and its finances, most staff feel that they have neither the capacity nor the support to effectively engage with innovation. A risk averse culture and inconsistent and unclear policies also present challenges. The prevailing issues hindering healthcare innovation are therefore occurring predominantly at the adoption and scaling stages, not with research and design.
There was an indication that industry and academic institutions can find it difficult to establish effective partnerships with NHS providers, so that we are beginning to see companies planning to launch medical devices in alternative jurisdictions as a result.
The report identifies early detection, diagnosis and prevention, and the personalisation of medicine and therapy as primary concerns. Additionally, innovations could change the workforce by facilitation of processing, manual tasks and supported decision making by AI.
What does the report recommend?
The IEP’s recommendations are intended to work synergistically and focus primarily on alignment between stakeholders across the NHS, industry and academia. While some areas identified by the IEP are already in the process of being addressed, other recommendations will need significant further development before they can be implemented.
The recommendations are summarised below, grouped under four key headings.
Setting direction: The innovation ecosystem needs to align with the government’s health and economic goals, specifically focussing on hospital to community, analogue to digital and sickness to prevention. The focus must move away from the traditional emphasis on individual products and be based on an awareness of what the NHS will need within a 10-year horizon.
Structures and tools for delivery: A robust set of standard tools, policies and guidance must be implemented at all levels to support decision-making at the local level. By streamlining overcomplicated oversight structures, space can be created for innovation programmes to flourish at the local level whilst supporting consistency. Clearer policies on data sharing and intellectual property will enable improved collaboration across the NHS and external stakeholders.
People, skills and capabilities: Training and recruitment needs to change to reflect innovation as a core competency within the NHS workforce. The means providing staff with the right skills, capabilities and culture to support collaboration but also building dedicated time into roles to support the testing, adoption and scaling of innovation.
Acceleration: The IEP recommends working at the local scale in the first instance, prioritising those areas which have already proven themselves as centres of excellence in innovation development and adoption. By doing so, flexibility at the local level will be built into the innovation ecosystem, and major localities can step forward as leaders in support of national priorities and facilitate sharing learning throughout the system.
If you would like to discuss any of the above please contact a member of our Healthcare team. This article was written by Sophie Pace-Bonello.