News

Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber has published a new innovation framework, designed to encourage stronger and more effective collaborative working between all stakeholders involved in developing innovation adoption action plans.

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recognises healthcare innovation as a critical driver to help improve the lives of our diverse populations. However, the pace at which innovation is adopted often does not match expectations. In particular, patients are uniquely placed to shine a light on some of the reasons why.

Commissioned by the Accelerated Access Collaborative, this project enabled us to engage with patients, carers, clinicians, SMEs, colleagues from the 15 health innovation networks across England to learn from past innovation rollouts and better understand the opportunities, challenges and barriers faced by patients.

These insights have informed the development of a framework, which includes practical steps for those seeking to accelerate the adoption of innovations. ‘A Framework for Driving Innovation Adoption Through Patient Insight’ provides actionable insights organised into themes that can be applied to most innovations entering the health and care system, new care pathways or interventions. The framework was built by aligning what matters to patients with actions that key stakeholders can take at various points along the care journey.

The framework encourages stakeholders to systematically identify and resolve inequality in service access and provision to minimise inequity in patient care outcomes.

The framework helps anyone interested in developing an innovation adoption plan to:

• understand what patient insight and information is already available about an innovation; what we should still ask patients to better understand and meet their needs and expectations.
• describe how these insights can guide the responsibilities of each stakeholder.
• inform the actions each stakeholder can take to better support patients through their care journey.
• create an evidence-based and co-produced action plan.

Verena Stocker, Director of Innovation, Research, Life Sciences and Strategy, NHS England, said: “This new resource places patients at the heart of healthcare transformation. If we are truly to bake innovation into the NHS, authentic co-production with patients and carers who use our services is invaluable. The patient insight framework provides a route map and actionable insights for use by innovation project teams to collaborate effectively with multiple stakeholders when designing effective adoption and spread plans.”

Sophie Mason, Senior Lead – Innovation and Improvement Projects, Health Innovation East Midlands, added: “The patient insight framework will be helpful for future MedTech product leads, the steps and stages help to create a timeline of activity for future programmes. I also really appreciated the use of the appendix to bring to life how this framework can be used to help understand the patient journey in accessing the Medtech Funding Mandate technologies or Rapid Uptake Products through individuals own words and experiences”.

Patient living with sickle cell disease: “I am really happy to know about the outcome. It’s really exceeded my expectations!  The report and accompanying framework will help to further the working relationship between patients and their families with their health care providers thus providing better opportunity for patient involvement. This truly helps make care more patient centred.”

Resources

‘A Framework for Driving Innovation Adoption Through Patient Insight’  and

‘Driving Innovation Uptake Through Patient Insight’ are now available for download

Dates for your diary

To share insights from adopting this framework, we are hosting two introductory webinars. These events are designed for anyone involved in introducing innovation into health and care services, including product leads across the 15 health innovation networks.

1^st webinar: 22 October 12:30-13:30pm

2^nd webinar: 06 November 09:00-10:00am

If you would like to attend one of these webinars, please email sara.cole@yhahsn.com