The final panel discussion in the Innovation Zone at our conference last month focussed on the deployment stage of an innovation’s journey to adoption and spread across health and care systems.
The conversation was chaired by our Deputy Director of Programmes, Dave Evans, and the panellists were:
- Carey McClellan, CEO and Founder of getUBetter
- Verena Stocker, Director of Innovation, Research and Life Sciences Strategy for NHS England
- Hassan Chaudhury, Co-Founder of Vita Healthcare Solutions and Commercial Director of DATA-CAN
Carey, Verena and Hassan explored the tensions between health and industry when attempting to work in partnership and how we can best balance the readiness of both systems and companies.
Carey McClellan started by talking through some of the barriers and obstacles he’d experienced trying to introduce his product getUBetter across the NHS.
Integrated care systems have gone through significant change in the last two years, which has impacted budgets and capacity to implement technology on the ground. Furthermore, all integrated care systems are developing differently – both culturally and in terms of their maturity and readiness to onboard and pull in technology. “It’s hard for innovators to navigate that minefield and choose which systems to work with,” Carey explained.
Data and metrics can be another minefield according to Carey. Innovators are rightly being asked to demonstrate impact through data and metrics, but often NHS colleagues don’t know what data they’re looking for to truly understand impact.
When thinking about digital inclusion, Carey highlighted the need to consider staff as much as patients and public, if not more so. He suggested that there is a significant training and education piece here for the health and care workforce in adopting digital technologies and not reinforcing barriers.
Verena echoed this need to focus on the workforce if the NHS is going to harness the full potential of digital technologies, and that we need to look at culture, skills and capabilities.
The demand is already there. Patients are expecting and asking for digital solutions from health and care providers, as they’re experiencing these in other parts of their lives, such as banking or grocery shopping.
Verena described how we must ensure the workforce are upskilled in digital methodologies and techniques, very much in the same way that we would for other areas, such as finance. There needs to be a minimum understanding around digital at all grades in the NHS, with certain roles requiring more specialist knowledge.
Digital can no longer be seen as something “over there” or “other” but rather a core part of delivering services in the NHS. “Technology and harnessing data are absolutely pivotal to the productivity agenda,” Verena commented.
There are different aspects to the digital transformation we need to see happening.
We need a core digital infrastructure, including a data infrastructure – whether that’s a federated data platform or a secure data environment depending on your use case. Then there’s the need for connecting data and tackling the interoperability challenges many of us are familiar with. There are the non-clinical facing things we can do to make staff’s lives easier – automated discharge letters, ambient voice technologies – systems to make our working lives easier and improve productivity. And of course digital must help us improve access through platforms like the NHS App, which Verena pointed out that 75% of the adult population are now using.
Hassan Chaudhury provided some food for thought on how to make it easier for companies to work with the NHS.
“Pilots hurt innovators,” Hassan suggested. “There’s the lack of clarity about what’s required from the pilot, the lack of certainty about what it leads to and the lack of any financial commitment to signing a deal afterwards.”
Hassan proposed a new approach to running pilots where an organisation commits to giving a company a contract if they can demonstrate certain conditions are fulfilled.
“The organisation stacks the deck to make sure it’s derisked,” said Hassan, “but if all the conditions are achieved, then at that point the company gets the contract. So innovators don’t have to think, will this pilot convert? And will I have to do seven, or eight, or ten more pilots, and collect data in different places? This would end that roundabout.”
Building on questions from the audience, the discussion went on to explore how the NHS might support more imaginative and creative approaches to procurement, including how we fulfil the need for more specialist procurement advice and support to work with innovators and piloting new solutions.
Explore further content from our 2024 conference here.
Posted on December 6, 2024
