However, the challenges facing the NHS have been well documented in recent months. At Health Innovation East we believe that the resolution of these challenges lies in embracing innovations that deliver value by contributing to a more sustainable health service and meeting the needs of patients and the public. We therefore welcome the Innovation Ecosystem Programme (IEP) report and its recommendations.
As the IEP states, in the financial year 2021/22, the UK’s Life Sciences industries delivered health improvement and wealth creation across the UK, generating £108 billion in turnover (1). Yet the widespread adoption of health innovation remains variable.
The UK has unparalleled potential to lead healthcare innovation if it can combine our academic excellence in early-stage discovery with the potential to test and adopt these inventions in the NHS, benefitting from the NHS’s large scale and its unique access to patient data through the single NHS number. The East of England is particularly well placed to deliver on this agenda. At Health Innovation East we know that action is needed right now to further unlock this potential and that this action must be grounded in accelerating effective innovation partnerships between the NHS and its suppliers. Patients and communities understandably expect the innovations that make the greatest difference to our health to be widely and consistently adopted.
Health Innovation East, and the wider national Health Innovation Network of which we are a member, are allocated a specific role in the IEP: Enabling the structures and tools for delivery, (1) (p11) to help the NHS genuinely lead healthcare innovation on a global scale.
Health Innovation East, as a member of the Health Innovation Network, is fully committed to our role in supporting the NHS, healthcare innovators and the life sciences industry in the East of England.
The IEP is the culmination of 18 months’ work by the review team, drawing on the inputs of hundreds of stakeholders and partners. Despite the vital review pre-dating the change in Government, the report rightly highlights the huge potential of health innovation’s role to deliver on the Government’s health and growth missions. It well articulates the importance of supporting the implementation of innovation and how central this should be to the forthcoming NHS 10 year plan. Health Innovation East, as a member of the Health Innovation Network, is fully committed to our role in supporting the NHS, healthcare innovators and the life sciences industry in the East of England.
Over the next 12-18 months our focus here at Health Innovation East will be on supporting those innovations for which there is already a strong evidence base, but which have not yet been widely adopted, given that implementation of innovation is a complex activity involving clinical and operational change at scale. Our recent innovation showcase showed a series of products and solutions in this category which are excellent demonstrators of the power of science and technology to bring beneficial and practical change to patients and clinicians in the NHS.
References
Do you have a great idea that could deliver meaningful change in the real world?
Get involved