The Health Policy Partnership has worked with the European Health Management Association to develop a report about effectively implementing innovations into care.
The report, Health system readiness for innovation: putting research into practice to drive effective implementation, aims to help healthcare managers and procurers of innovation ensure that everyone can access the high-quality care they need. It draws on discussions from the ‘Building readiness: from research to impact’ webinar and a review of five years of practical examples of implementation.
Medicines and technologies are advancing rapidly, with many changes promising to meaningfully improve population health. However, the potential benefits depend on health systems being ready to integrate innovations into practice. Unfortunately, implementation is often unsuccessful, leaving people unable to access best-practice care. Delays or failures in implementation can increase the cost of care and create inefficiencies in delivery. It is essential to close the gap between research and practice to ensure that innovations reach the people who need them.
The Health system readiness for innovation report highlights five guiding principles that should be embraced and followed by healthcare managers and procurers to encourage successful implementation of innovations into care:
- Rigorous data collection
- Systems thinking
- Collaboration
- Understanding the local context
- Iterative improvement.
The report particularly calls attention to the role of frameworks as tools to enable these key principles of implementation.
Read the report
You can find out more about what makes a good framework in the first report in this series, Fostering system readiness in cancer care, published in October 2021.
