Innovation Discovery Project
Identifying innovations for improved health care.
With increasing pressures on Health and Social Care there has never been a more important time for us to get better at harnessing new innovations to transform the way in which we deliver care. The Northern Ireland Health and Social care system in common with other health care systems encounter challenges in identifying and scaling new innovations.
Over the past months, DHCNI in partnership with colleagues in R&D and the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, have embarked on a discovery project aimed at assessing, understanding, and optimising our healthcare system through innovation and collaboration. We have commissioned the Healthcare Innovation Consortium (HIC) to assist in this work.
Phase 1 - Discovery
The first phase of this work, which involved extensive collaboration with senior leadership and key stakeholders across the system, has recently concluded. This work has provided invaluable insights into existing strengths and notable challenges hindering the system. Several barriers to effective collaboration have been identified, including ambiguous strategic directives, operational challenges, siloed working, ineffective communication, a risk averse culture, and a lack of integration.
Details of the outputs from this first phase, including a summary presentation and reports on Stakeholder Engagement; ‘As Is’ Landscape; Current Challenges; Key Steps to Success; and Innovation Models are available to download below.
Phase 2: Discovery+
Building on these initial findings, the next phase of this work aims to fully inform the ‘as-is’ landscape across Northern Ireland. The review of key processes and structures that enable scale of innovation, identification of priority areas to address, along with opportunities to leverage investment, will aid the understanding of what will work best for the health and social care system. The goal of this work is to propose a model that supports a sustainable innovation ecosystem across Northern Ireland.
Work in Discovery+ will be taken forward through 5 workstreams:
Governance and policy
What has been successful in other devolved nations at a policy and governance level. How is innovation supported in primary and community care in the region?
Investment and commissioning
How is innovation currently commissioned, procured and scaled in the region e.g. NICE, SBRI and what how can we best harness the encompass programme implementing epic to support health innovation activity?
Innovation priorities and evaluation of success
What should the measures of success be for a new health innovation model? How are innovation priorities and programmes identified and supported?
Communications and engagement
How is this work communicated across the region to engage stakeholders already supporting innovation? How do we plan to communicate this to external stakeholders and support industry with the newly proposed model.
DHCNI work planning integration
How does this project integrate effectively with plans and programmes that exist within DHCNI
Timelines and delivery
This phase of the work will involve a combination of desk-based research and in-person or virtual meetings with relevant identified leads who will be contacted directly by HIC.
The intention is that this work will take place over 10 weeks and conclude by mid-July.
The SROs for this work are: Eddie Ritson, DHCNI (Eddie.Ritson@hscni.net) and Suzie Ali-Hassan, HIC (suzie@hicdigital.co.uk).
Please feel free to reach out to them directly with any thoughts, suggestions, or questions you may have as we move forward.
Phase 1 Outputs
Page last updated: 9 May 2024