Evaluation of the Adopting Innovation Programme

What is the issue?

The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has been under pressure for more than a decade. Financing, the shifting needs of society, including an ageing population, emerging public health threats and the increasing prevalence of multi-morbidities, have made it increasingly challenging to deliver quality health care that is free at the point-of-service. For the NHS to cope with these pressures, it must support the spread of evidence-based innovations to generate better outcomes more efficiently. However, efforts to strengthen innovation in health and social care have been met with at best only partial success.

The Health Foundation established the Adopting Innovation programme in 2021. They hope to better understand how NHS provider organisations can more successfully identify, adapt, implement and scale health and social care innovations in ways that can be sustained over time. As part of this programme, four Innovation Hubs were established in different regions of England with the aim of promoting innovation projects and establishing wider activities and initiatives to support a culture that is more conducive to innovation. These hubs are provided with learning support through an external organisation, the Innovation Unit, and have been encouraged to share learning with each other and collaborate with other organisations within their local Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), such as Academic Health Science Networks.

How did we help?

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Health Foundation to conduct a formative and a summative evaluation of the four Innovation Hubs to understand how innovation can be better supported in the UK health and care system and to identify practical, evidence-based and sustainable actions for ICSs and others to consider.

Data were collected through surveys of each hub and other programme stakeholders (such as partner organisations), a document review of hub progress reports and other programme materials (e.g. applications), and interviews with key stakeholders.

What did we find?

Hubs established themselves in local healthcare settings, each with existing, complex innovation-implementation ecosystems that, to varying degrees, already supported innovation adoption and spread. Each hub added value in terms of three core functions:

1. Providing central coordination of innovation activities
2. Disseminating information and raising awareness about innovation; and
3. Catalysing partnerships by connecting key players involved in innovation activities.

All four hubs tended to select from a suite of similar activities, including developing tools for innovators; providing bespoke innovator support; developing educational offers; networking and partnership building; facilitating and encouraging public and patient engagement in innovation activities; and signposting to innovation resources.

Over the course of their development and maturation, hubs faced challenges related to: limited time and resources to accomplish ambitious goals set by the programme; the need to balance a structured approach to hub processes while being flexible and responsive to local system needs; limited workforce capacity due to the small size of hubs and their reliance on in-kind support from the system; issues with building relationships, stakeholder engagement, and defining roles and responsibilities; and other contextual factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, actual NHS spending that fell behind planned spending, and changes to ICS structures.

What can be done?

Recommendations for individuals involved in local innovation adoption and spread are as follows:

• Include the core functions of central coordination, information dissemination and catalysing partnerships as part of an overall strategy to build or strengthen innovation ecosystems.
• Identify and map individuals, teams and organisations within the local ICS that are involved in innovation.
• Identify current barriers or gaps to innovation, adoption and spread and agree to these with stakeholders.
• Develop a compelling case for a specific ‘innovation offer’ that could better support innovation adoption in your local system.
• Align goals and objectives of innovation offers to system priorities, connecting the dots between what is important to frontline staff and senior leadership to facilitate innovation activities.
• Obtain, early in the process, organisational support and leadership endorsement and involvement to ensure there is support for innovation activities.
• Make sure that your innovation offers, including processes and activities, are co-produced with a range of stakeholders, including innovation end-users, system leadership, partner organisations and members of the public.

Recommendations for national policy makers:

• Leverage the establishment of ICSs to inform policies that support local innovation-implementation ecosystems, which in turn can help to deliver on national priorities for innovation uptake and spread and improve health and social care outcomes.

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