Innovation

In the context of extreme financial constraints and increasing demands being placed on the NHS, we can no longer rely on the current – slow and relatively ineffective – approaches to the diffusion of innovation.

To tackle the challenge of diffusion, UCLPartners has established the After the Light Bulb initiative, which aims to achieve a breakthrough in both “thinking” and “action” around how innovations can be scaled across the NHS. To make this possible, we draw on diverse fields of knowledge (such as anthropology, communication studies, marketing, economics and complexity theory) and a wide range of examples of successful practices (including incentives; performance information, competition, and regulation).

The initiative’s first phase involved drawing on existing knowledge and gathering insights from renowned academics, innovation experts and respected practitioners. The findings have been synthesised in to a paper which describes the characteristics of a health care system which stimulates diffusion. The paper is available -  here

The second phase took the form of a large scale behavioural simulation on 28^th September 2011, where we tested how best the characteristics might be applied to the NHS. This will lead to a set of recommendations about how the NHS might develop to facilitate innovation diffusion, and will inform UCLPartners’ implementation plans for delivering innovations at scale across entire populations. The report detailing the recommendations will be available at the end of October 2011.

UCLPartners has recently submitted a response to “Spreading Innovation: A call for ideas”, which can be downloaded here.

For more information please contact Amanda Begley