Innovation: what is holding you back?

In today’s financial climate, the NHS remains under the spotlight with growing pressure to drive forward quality improvements in care, secure costsavings, and boost efficiencies. Innovation plays a key role here, and is imperative to the future of the NHS in many ways; it provides the NHS with an opportunity to shine locally, regionally, nationally and globally. At a time when the UK healthcare market faces unprecedented challenges, innovation offers a solution to a number of issues. Most importantly innovation helps deliver better care and outcomes for patients, as well as creating crucial financial benefits from cost-savings, and new income streams. Through facilitating savings and improved quality it also increases efficiencies; another major focus in our pursuit of transformational change. As a world class service the healthcare sector is committed to finding new ways to help raise standards. Over the years thousands of healthcare professionals turned inventors, from across the sector, have revealed some ground breaking, world class ideas.

 Innovation inside the NHS

Many ideas hail from people in different roles inside the NHS; a key source of innovation. Innumerably during their professional career, people in the sector have ideas on how to make things work better, some have countless ideas, and what unites them at this stage is that in many instances the ideas remain untouched. Lack of time, shortage of support, and inadequate information mean that every year hundreds of ideas remain unexplored, and yet there are established support networks for innovators that provide invaluable support. Various national and regional organisations currently champion innovation in the NHS, and collectively have progressed thousands of ideas through the development stages from generation to implementation. These organisations understand the needs and priorities in healthcare, have the experience, connections with industry and academia, the commercial skills, and an understanding of the potential obstacles, to enable ideas to be developed and exploited. They help bridge the gap to push ideas through the key stages quicker and smoother than undertaking the journey alone.