‘The Innovation Headache’

Tackling the topic of “The Innovation Headache”, innovators Peter Hames (Big Health UK) and Bay Gross (Cityblock Health) kicked off a discussion with CHN members around scaling in a entrepreneurial environment (not an NHS environment).
The issues debated:
- Problems not products – commissioners/providers need to communicate their problems to ensure that innovation is aligned to this need. There is no shortage of innovation but we are not good at procuring it as a system.
- Shared rewards – put a price to the problem and be bold enough to share the rewards with commissioners/providers (and be big enough to accept the pain if it goes wrong).
- Firm but fair evaluation – agree a high bar for quality evaluation – innovator will create ‘up’ to that level (clinically, operationally and financially).
- ‘Kill the old’ – after adopting change, stop the old behaviours, processes, tech, budget, contracts, etc – to sustain adoption and cultural leaps.
- Regulatory certainty – create a common understanding of minimum acceptable requirements.
Also discussed were the challenges of adoption – after proof of concept, after positive evaluation, after improving patient outcomes, after demonstrating clear financial savings to the NHS there are still huge barriers in place which prevent wider adoption across our nations. It shouldn’t be this hard!
A couple of good quotes from the evening:“Don’t try to eat the whole elephant” – start with a small problem to solve, prove it through evaluation then expand along the service line.
“Sometimes the people closest to the problem and solution are furthest from the money.”



Many thanks to Accurx for hosting this event, Murray Ellender for taking photos and Tim de Winter for the excellent summary.