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Sustainable Innovation Testbed

This theme will use SUSTAIN to provide an industry test-bed to develop and evaluate innovations at an early (ideation) phase, providing a vital ‘stepping stone’ to help accelerate new technology through the innovation pathway.

 

The Problem:

There is a lack of support for early-stage innovators in evaluating new technologies for the NHS in realistic environments prior to clinical evaluation.

  • Innovations require support to ensure sustainability is embedded within their offering
  • It is essential to evaluate the efficacy of innovations early in the design-cycle – however it remains challenging to do this within ‘realistic’ surgical environments, factors include institutional policy, governance and organisational barriers [1,2]

The Result:

  • Barriers limit the development and scale-up of early-stage innovations which could benefit the NHS and NetZero targets [3]

The Potential:

Strategic initiatives from UK Gov, most recently the Design for Life Roadmap [4] promote integration of innovation within the NHS to address challenges of Net Zero, Sustainability and Quality of Care.
Early-stage evaluation of innovation can provide valuable feedback to:

  • Identify and prioritise promising innovation early to improve efficiency of innovation pipeline
  • Provide timely feedback to ‘course correct’ innovations where appropriate
  • Robustly evidence performance in sustainability, carbon reduction and healthcare before later-stage clinical studies

The Leeds HRC are running an Innovation for Healthcare Net Zero Programme in partnership with the Health Innovation Network and Pd-m to catalyse the development of sustainable healthcare innovation. The programme aligns with the Design for Life roadmap, and NHS-E Innovation Guidance, to help early-stage 'innovators', embed and evidence sustainability within their offerings to the NHS.

 

[1] Arora A, Wright A, Cheng TKM, Khwaja Z, Seah M. Innovation Pathways in the NHS: An Introductory Review. Ther Innov Regul Sci 2021;55:1045–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43441-021-00304-w.
[2] Llewellyn S, Procter R, Harvey G, Maniatopoulos G, Boyd A. Facilitating technology adoption in the NHS: negotiating the organisational and policy context a qualitative study. Health Soc Care Deliv Res 2014;2:1–132. https://doi.org/10.3310/hsdr02230.
[3] Nuffield Trust. Achieving scale and spread: Learning for innovators and policy-makers | Request PDF. 2020.
[4] Department of Health and Social Care. Design for Life roadmap. 2024.