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Innovation

Innovation is high up on the national NHS agenda, having featured heavily in the NHS Long Term Plan published in January 2019. This increased focus on Innovation is furthered evidenced by the creation of arm’s length bodies such as NHS England’s Transformation Directorate, which focusses on digital innovation, and the recommissioning of the Academic Health Science Networks, positioned to bridge the gap between NHS, academia and industry, and to speed up the adoption of innovations. With the increasing development of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), we will increasingly see the need and opportunity for not only doing things differently, but doing different things. As a Trust with world class aspirations, and the largest acute hospital within the Coventry and Warwickshire Health and Care Partnership (CWHCP) footprint, we strive to be at the forefront of innovation.

For the NHS, an innovation is doing something new that improves efficiency, quality & safety, or reduces cost. An innovation could be, for example:

  • A new form of drug or medical device, e.g. a new suture or patient held device
  • A new diagnostic test, e.g. using CT scans to report upon cardiac flow
  • A new service process, e.g. a behaviour change movement to improve daily practice

Innovation does not necessarily mean cutting edge technology such as AI or blockchain. Innovations can be small, medium or large. The shared characteristic is that the innovation is new to the organisation and requires changes to be made for it to be used successfully. Our aim is to solve healthcare related challenges through innovative solutions.


UHCW’s Innovation Team was set up to support the interface between healthcare, industry, academia, patients, and the public.

The work we do spans four strategic areas; idea development, innovation adoptions, strategic challenge identification and building innovation partnerships.

Our Team has experience and skills in:
 

  • User-centred design
  • Co-production
  • Innovative methodology
  • End user evaluation
  • Change management
  • Project management
  • Challenge definition
  • Design briefs
  • Workshop facilitation
  • Idea generation
  • Problem scoping

If you are a company who has designed an innovative solution you think may be useful for our patients in Coventry and Warwickshire, we want to hear about it!

As a Team, we can support you and your company in numerous ways, regardless of the current stage of your development, including user-centred design, ideation workshops, end user evaluation and much more!

Additionally, we also provide a bespoke innovative product evaluation service, which is ideal for companies who have an innovative CE/UKCA marked product(s) and are looking to expand into the NHS market or would like support with usability evidence base.

Click here to view more information about how the Innovation Team can support you.

If you would like to discuss further, please click this link (opens in new window)  and fill out the form, one of our team will offer a timely response.

We adopt the Design Council's double diamond approach to demand led innovation. This approach ensures that the problem we are addressing with the idea, challenge or adoption, is effectively scoped and understood, before solutions are brainstormed and developed in an empathetic and user-centered manner. By adopting the double diamond approach, it enables our Team to encourage a mixture of divergence and convergence thinking to; identify the problem, understand/define the problem, scope possible solutions and finally develop well-defined solution to implement.

We triage all projects by assessing their desirability, feasibility and viability, and examine how the projects aligns to our Innovation and Trust Strategy Throughout the process, we ensure all stakeholders are engaged at the earliest opportunity, to create projects which are clinically and operationally appropriate. This may also involve, collaborating with our team of Internal Innovation Champions, by asking for their expert opinion on new opportunities, products, devices and much more, to enable us to efficiently shape the services we deliver.

What is intellectual property (IP)?

IP is the way we protect our ideas to prevent others from using or profiting from them without permission. IP can be bought, sold borrowed and lent in the same was as normal property and is therefore an important and valuable asset. The UK IP Office defines IP as the “tangible expression of knowledge and creativity that encompasses the majority of what we write, draw, make and record”. For example, it could be a new medical device, training aid, leaflet, mobile app or piece of software, or even the expertise and specialist knowledge that you have built up over the years as part of your job.