Web alert: enabling and stimulating innovation in the delivery of health care.

In June 2008, the Department of Health published the results of the National Health Service (NHS) Next Stage Review, led by Lord Ara Darzi. This report, entitled High Quality Care for All, presented a vision for the future of the NHS that shifted the focus of attention away from increasing capacity and towards improving the quality of health care. Ensuring effectiveness, prioritising safety and enhancing patients’ experience of health services were identified as the essential components of high-quality care, and among the measures proposed to tackle these challenges was an escalation in the support for ‘innovation’ across all NHS organisations. Innovation occurs when individuals within the NHS invent a new technique, device or process (or adapt an idea from elsewhere), pilot it and test it out to show that it improves quality outcomes and successfully disseminate their idea to others within their organisation or beyond. High Quality Care for All gives strategic health authorities (SHAs) the legal responsibility to promote each of these elements of innovation within the organisations that they oversee, and to report back annually to the Department of Health on their progress. In addition to this, 2009 saw the publication of theNHSConstitution, which promised a ‘commitment to innovation’, as well as the response to Lord Darzi’s report by the NHS Chief Executive, who launched the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) challenge. So innovation is the name of the game, but what does it mean to support innovation? What are the barriers to innovation, and what should leaders do to engender an innovative workforce? The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) at the University of Birmingham has produced an overview of evidence from around the world as to what approaches have worked to embed innovation within organisations. Their top ten recommendations for promotion of innovation include: . supporting collaboratives and professional networks in order to build on previous experience of what does and doesn’t work . building time into theworkingweeks of leaders and clinical staff for them to attend training, to develop ideas, and to visit innovative colleagues . using techniques from knowledge management that make it easier for staff to find and share knowledge . explicitly valuing innovators through awards and incentives . nurturing those individuals ‘who can bridge different sectors and build new networks and communities’.