One thing the NHS has never been short of is pilots. How many of them “stick”? How many of them become Business as Usual (BAU) and, even better, spread to other services or organisations?
It’s very difficult to pin down an accurate answer to these questions but the 2009 NHS sustainability guide suggested that up to 70% of all organisational change fails to survive. A great many of these change efforts are likely to be in the form of pilots.
In this blog, Head of Innovation Pipeline Development, Suzanne Horobin, and Head of Innovation Programme Delivery, Tracey Jackman, look at value proposition in more detail and address a number of other factors that will have an impact on whether innovation can move beyond a pilot into spread and adoption.
They discussed the themes in the blog in more detail at our Innovation Insights webinar on Tuesday 28th November.
The NHS operates within a challenging budgetary landscape so, when funding can be secured to undertake a pilot, it is in the best interests of patients, healthcare professionals and the system overall that attention is paid to what will happen at the end of the project.
Health Innovation East Midlands has identified a series of attributes that it recognises as essential to spread and adoption – a set of minimum requirements. Rather than thinking about these aspects at the end of a pilot, it makes absolute sense to scope and plan pilot projects with the intention of generating all the required information and evidence from the outset.
This information will include the details needed for you to tell a clear story to your stakeholders as you form a clear value proposition and describe key attributes.
At the webinar Tracey and Suzanne went through the different elements of this story.
The Value Proposition should detail:
- What is the problem you are trying or solve?
- What is the consequence of the problem? (Who is affected / how?)
- What is your innovation?
- What impact does your innovation have?
Throughout these steps you are aiming to recruit your ‘first follower’ the person who will see the potential of your innovation and get on board to help show others the way.
The webinar looked at this further as well as at how you might want to record the impact of your pilot along the way – collecting qualitative and quantitative data, patient stories and evidence to encourage other followers to see the benefits of adopting your innovation after the pilot is complete.
Tracey and Suzanne discussed the attributes of the innovation that project teams should consider prior to implementation, so that key information and understanding is built along the way. These include:
- Advantages of the innovation
- Is it observable – can it be seen in action?
- Disadvantages of the innovation
- Complexity and scalability of the change required?
- Adaptability to the chosen environment
- Compatibility of the innovation to the needs, values, and beliefs of stakeholders
The webinar ended by considering human factors and its place in determining the success of a pilot and the importance of ensuring that innovators/pilot leads are working with service delivery teams to enable sustainability and spread.
This blog and webinar are a brief introduction to designing pilots with sustainability and spread in mind. If you would like any further information about this, please contact
More resources
Read our blog by Digital Health and Care lead Dawn Plummer focusing on the importance of evaluation in driving improvement, in which she looks at the significance of evaluation.
Read our blog by Commercial Director, Tim Robinson which addresses the recipe for success in introducing innovation to the NHS and includes the development of a compelling value proposition.
Watch the recording of our recent session by Mark Dines-Allen, Focus ADHD National Programme Manager on Innovation Implementation, Readiness and Resourcing. This session presents an easy to adapt framework for people working within health and care systems seeking to adopt and embed a service innovation or transformation.