Richard Stubbs
Chair of the Health Innovation NetworkRichard Stubbs, Chair of the Health Innovation Network, shares the recently relicensed Networkโs vision for putting innovation at the heart of healthcare.
The adoption and spread of healthcare innovation in the UK is notoriously difficult to achieve and the NHS continues to require support to increase the pace and scale of implementing proven solutions that benefit patient care.
That was the original idea behind the Health Innovation Network when it was conceived over a decade ago.
Originally called Academic Health Science Networks, we started off as local, unlinked functions. Since then, collaborative efforts have created a national network that is both a part of the country-wide NHS infrastructure and also a trusted local partner, embedded in frontline healthcare systems.
Since our inception in 2013, the Network has delivered some major achievements: over 2.59m patients have benefited from innovation, more than ยฃ1.8bn has been contributed to UK PLC, and an estimated savings of ยฃ165m has been created for the NHS.
Our new name rightly signals both a simplification in our intent and a focus on health innovation more widely. The past ten years have shown us that innovative solutions and innovators come from a much wider pool of expertise than the traditional translation of clinical, academic research to frontline services – vital though that remains to everything we do.
Improving how we deliver and receive healthcare today now calls on small and medium-sized enterprises, local authorities, the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector, innovative individuals within the NHS workforce, and patients, as well as โbig pharmaโ and academia, to source the best and brightest new ideas for improving patient care.
Anyone with a great idea can become a health innovator, and innovating for the benefit of patients is everyoneโs job.
It’s our job at the Network to ensure that these great ideas are discovered, developed appropriately and safely deployed in the NHS.
Permission to Go Further, Faster with Health Innovation
The new five-year licence period, and current review of the innovation ecosystem being led by Professor Roland Sinker, present a brilliant opportunity for us all to be bolder in our national ambitions for innovation and show some serious intent to becoming the most innovative healthcare system in the world.
Our experience shows that the most successful innovation does not happen in isolation. Coalescing and coordinating the numerous people and organisations needed to deliver ambitious innovation is necessary, and a key function of the 15 local health innovation networks. From working with regulators to ensure quicker validation for innovations in real-world settings to ensuring the policy levers and incentives are in place for widespread uptake of new products, we are committed to fostering relationships across the ecosystem that will make innovation easier for everyone to do.
Such partnerships include our work supporting the NHS Innovation Service, a digital record that helps innovators to access bespoke help from specialist organisations, and our collaborative working agreement with NICE, which seeks to ensure the most clinically and cost-effective approaches to care are implemented and scaled up in the health and care system, through intelligence and insight sharing.
Local Expertise, National Impact
Innovation adoption is not taking an off-the-shelf product to be โdeliveredโ into health and social care. The need for flexibility in how we innovate in different areas – from rural to metropolitan to coastal – cannot be underestimated.
Being both a national network and trusted partner locally means we can support the delivery of national impact while retaining a closeness and investment in what is happening at a local level. It also means we can get closer to local problems and the local partners who can help to tackle the growing healthcare inequalities across the country. Inspiration might happen nationally, but itโs perspiration locally that delivers innovation to patients.
For example, our national commission to deliver the Innovations for Healthcare Inequalities Programme (InHIP) was translated to data-led efforts to increase direct anti-coagulant (DOAC) use in North West London, the introduction of an innovative and non-invasive colorectal cancer test called a faecal immunochemical test (FIT) at a primary care outreach service in Devon, and fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) testing in Greater Manchester. Each project addresses health inequalities, but in tailored ways, best suited to their locality and local populationsโ needs.
1500 to 1
We also hold a wonderfully unique position working on behalf of both sides of health innovation: we prioritise both the health and wealth of our industry, with patient benefit as the goal for both.
Our relationship between the NHS and the life science industry allows us to act as curator of the innovation pipeline, an asset of over 1500 promising innovations with the potential to increase the health and wealth of the nation.
The pipeline provides value to local integrated care systems that, in collaboration with their local network, can scan for new products, medicines, and ideas to find the best solutions to help tackle their individual areas of unmet need. It simultaneously provides value to our commissioners by generating insights on where our weaknesses in innovation โ or overcrowded markets โ lie, building a better national picture of innovation requirements.
No Longer AOB, but Not Quite BAU
Itโs not that long ago that innovation was often in the โnice to doโ section of meeting agendas after all of the โimportantโ business had been discussed.
That is changing. Innovation is now seen as part of the answer to some of the immense challenges faced by the NHS. The work of the Health Innovation Network is to support the UK to be not just the most innovation-friendly, but the most innovation-capable healthcare system in the world โ to the benefit of all of us, and the generations to come.
Curia’s Health, Care and Life Sciences Research Group
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