Innovating for improved healthcare: Policy and practice for a thriving NHS (original) (raw)

Aims  A prioritisation survey was conducted to help identify what stakeholders in the health system consider to be the priority interventions for supporting an innovative health system (be they existing support mechanisms or to support capacity-building).  Stakeholders were consulted on the potential impact, sustainability and scalability of initiatives and interventions seeking to enable the development and uptake of innovation in the health system. The focus was on different interventions intended to support key drivers of innovation. 1 Design and implementation  The survey, which was open for 7.5 weeks (13 June 2017 to 4 August 2017), examined six drivers of innovation in the health system identified by Marjanovic, Sim et al. (2017a, 2017b): skills, capabilities and leadership; motivations and accountabilities; the information and evidence environment; relationships and networks; patient and public involvement and engagement; and funding and commissioning.  For each driver/theme, respondents were asked to choose (from a longlist) three innovation-related initiatives, interventions or support mechanisms taking place or identified as needed in the health system, that they felt would be most important and likely to lead to impact on the overall system. Respondents were given the opportunity to provide examples of initiatives they thought worked particularly well or not as well as intended.  256 people responded to the survey overall (representatives of innovation and improvement networks, healthcare professionals and providers, commissioning, the private sector, higher education institutions and research institutes, charity and public and patient voice, and policymakers). 2 Key findings The most frequently selected initiatives (percentage of respondents given in brackets) and overarching findings for each theme are described below. Skills, capabilities and leadership:  Organisations designed to share knowledge, information and learning, raise awareness about innovation opportunities and help nurture relationships to match supply and demand (59.0 per cent).  Professional networking opportunities and establishing 'communities of practice' (52.6 per cent).  Initiatives to facilitate cross-sector learning (51.4 per cent). The selected initiatives are all related to knowledge-sharing and communication activities; initiatives specifically related to training were selected fewer times overall, although training through coaching and mentoring seems to be particularly valued by healthcare professional and provider representatives (and more so than formal curriculum-based training). 1 The interventions were identified in Phase 1 of this study, but stakeholders were also given the opportunity to flag additional needs. The survey, which was implemented using the online survey tool SurveyMonkey, 5 was sent by email to 955 individuals spanning healthcare professionals and providers, members of innovation and improvement networks, commissioners, academics, the private sector and policymakers. 6 The initial email list was made up of contacts from prior rounds of this study (see Marjanovic, Sim et al. 2017a, 2017b). We also contacted members of key innovation, quality improvement and health research networks (such as Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs), Vanguards, Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs), Test Beds, Innovation Hubs), using email addresses from scale implantation and use of the initiatives within regions, between regions and nationally; sustainability refers to the potential for sustained use of the initiative by the health system over time.