Implementing a new innovative product or service into an organisation presents opportunities as well as challenges. Managing change and understanding how to engage with the people who will be using the innovation, then testing and measuring the impact of changes in the workplace of clinicians and managers will optimise successful implementation.
On the flip side of this, entrepreneurs who develop and bring new innovative services or products to market require specific knowledge and skills in order to navigate the health and care system. The resources on this page can help you:
Understand and manage implementation of a new innovation for improvement
A good place to start is to assess your organisational readiness for innovation and improvement. The QUASER guide is a research based tool that helps health and care providers reflect on their readiness for change so that they can being to implement organisational improvement programmes, you can find a link to the guide.
This innovation staff survey tool allows you to assess the skills and knowledge of the people in your organisation in relation to innovation, you can find the survey.
The process of managing change in the NHS can be complex, however there are tools to guide you through the process, Isle & Sutherland provide a useful review of various approaches and tools in this document.
- The NHS Change Model offers a guide to successful change management.
- There is an eight step model for managing change.
- The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement provide excellent project management guides that help you through the process of implementing a project.
- Evaluation of Innovation in Healthcare provides an outline of the key areas of governance and project management relating to the successful delivery of innovation evaluation projects in the NHS and other healthcare provider organisations.
Measuring improvement and impact
Quality Improvement in health care provides an approach to improving and measuring change in health and care that ensures better alignment of overall improvement aims and engagement of patients and people working in the system.
An introduction to quality improvement is provided here.
We have selected the following sites and resources to give you more information about quality improvement in health care. These sites provide a wealth of information:
Quality Improvement theory and practice
- Quality Improvment theory and practice
- Health Care Foundation Quality Improvement made simple
- What is quality improvement and how will it transform health care?
Organisations specialising in Quality Improvement
- The Health Foundation
- The Institute for Health Care Improvement
- Advancing Quality Alliance
- Healthcare improvement Scotland
- The Institute for Health Care Improvement
Quality Improvement Tools and Techniques
- Lean
- Plan to study
- Model for Improvement
- Seven step measurement process
- Lean six sigma
- Root Cause Analysis and Five Whys
- Human Factors – understanding how technical and people systems interact together
Measuring improvement
- SPC and run charts
- Patient Reported Outcome Measures
- Right Care – using population health measure
Getting products ready for market
- Health Innovation North West Coast's Innovation Pathway
- Leading change, adding value.
- It is useful to understand the context within which the NHS sits, this White Paper laid out plans for clinical commissioning and the regulation of health and social care.
- The NHS Five Year Forward View was published in October 2014, sets out the challenges faced by the NHS, how health services need to change and describes a range of changes, including new models of care.
- The Kings Fund developed an organogram explaining how the NHS in England is structured.
- Commissioning in the NHS is the process of planning and purchasing NHS services to meet population health needs, the Kings Fund describe the current commissioning priorities.
- The Commissioning Review provided this useful article on new models of care and how this might affect commissioning.
- 5 propositions to speed up access to transformative health technology that can change the lives of NHS patients.
- A guide to navigating the innovation pathway in England.
- Intellectual Property (IP) for business: events, guidance, tools and case studies.
- Procurement is the process of buying goods and services, NHS Employers have provided some useful information on procurement.
- The Department of Health have developed an Action Plan to support small and medium sized enterprises and to ensure that 25% of central government procurement goes to SMEs.
- Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) are required by the Cabinet Office for information and communication technology projects in order to assess the risks to the privacy of individuals and mitigate risks. A sample template is provided here.
- More information on PIA can be found here: Privacy by design | ICO.
- Information Governance (IG) is the framework for handling personal information in a confidential and secure manner, current IG policy documents can be found here.
- The Digital Health and Care Alliance is a useful hub for sharing information necessary to redesign services digitally.
- CE marking – how a product complies with EU safety, health and environmental requirements, and how to place a CE marking on your product.
- Medical devices: conformity assessment and the CE mark – how to conform with the legal requirements for placing medical devices on the market.
- In addition, organisations may sometimes choose to gift or loan medical devices and technologies to NHS organisations, and this requires a manufacturers or resellers to follow the Master Indemnity Agreement process, more on which can be found here.
- For information about remote and video enabled provision of health and care services.
- The NHS National Innovation Centre outlines structures that exist to help companies contact and sell existing and innovative products to the NHS.
- Overseeing the creation, continuous improvement and success of a digital product and/or platform.
If you are interested in reading more about these topics the library services at Lancashire Care have pulled together a comprehensive literature review:
