Scaling and spreading health care innovations: what does it take?

The Health Foundation is working with the Innovation Unit to understand what it takes to successfully scale and spread innovation in health care. 

The spread of innovation in health care has been a longstanding challenge – to the detriment of people’s health and the potential lost opportunity of considerable savings in an era of unprecedented financial constraints. Spreading and integrating proven innovations – taking them from the margins to the mainstream – would help make substantial progress towards transforming health care.

Many reports have focused on the barriers and obstacles, yet little is known about how and why the most successful innovations have spread. In this project we will be focusing on creating a deep analysis of why some innovations have successfully scaled.

We will be looking at a wide range of innovations from across the UK, which have made a significant impact to the quality of health care services. These will include innovative:

• processes
• products
• pathways
• devices
• new models of care
• services.

Through this research we will tell the stories of a series of innovations that have successfully spread over the last two decades in the UK.

Do you have a success story, or know of an innovation, that you think should be part of this work?

Please share them with us by emailing scaleandspread@innovationunit.org with the following information:

• The name of the innovation/project.
• The name of the innovator/project lead.
• A brief description of the innovation/project, including to what extent it has spread.
• Any useful links to further information.

The deadline for innovation stories is Monday 20 June 2016.

To find out more about this work contact scaleandspread@innovationunit.org