What we did
Collaborate, connect and contribute
A Frontiers meeting (jointly hosted by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Farr Institute and NHS Scotland) brought people together from across NHS Scotland, academia, industry and the third sector to consider how to combine different technologies with innovations to transform how cancer services are delivered in NHS Scotland, resulting in the launch of the £1m SFC ‘Innovation Centre Challenge Fund in Cancer’.
This multi-sector effort was developed into the ‘Cancer Innovation Challenge’ (CIC) - an 18 month work programme which weaved together the capability and expertise of three Innovation Centres with that of IHDP, NHS Scotland, National Services Scotland (NSS) and NHS Lothian.
IHDP played a key role in ensuring the Challenge delivered projects that were of real value for clinicians, patients and services:
- To be fit for purpose, the Challenge programme itself had to fit within NHS systems and processes. The initial programme developed by innovation centres was radically rewritten by IHDP to fit within the NHS context, and to ensure implementation would add real value.
- Once the Challenge was launched, the IHDP team were members of both the CIC Strategic Group (Aileen Keel) and Operational Delivery Group (Hilary Dobson). We brought clinical expertise, eHealth expertise, and wide-ranging knowledge of NHS systems, to steer the programme at all stages.
- As an independent programme with links across stakeholder groups, IHDP was able to broker connections with NHS teams, Health Boards and patients to enable SMEs to seek the right input, and to develop collaborative and fit for purpose proposals for innovation.
- When assessing project bids for Challenge project funding, IHDP was uniquely placed to bring its range of expertise and knowledge to triage bids, and to challenge the companies where relevant.
For example, the CIC and its partners hosted ‘data dive’ events open to industry, researchers and students - these acted as a melting pot to generate ideas for potential data science solutions to clinical and patient issues.
Optimise the scope and approach for impact
The resulting rigorous and clear criteria ensured:
- a manageable number of realistic proposals were submitted for assessment
- proposals submitted could be of real benefit for the cancer sector and patients
Generally, proposed solutions needed to:
- be compatible with NHS Scotland’s systems
- focus impact where it is most needed and add ‘real value’ for patients and clinicians
- include realistic parameters, for example be compliant with the current system of Information Governance
- include citizen involvement
- be ‘scalable’ and sustainable
Specific workstream requirements included:
Patient reported data:
- Equity of access: variability in socio-economic, literacy, ethnicity, rurality, age, disability, long-term conditions, co-morbidity and other sources of inequality all need to be considered
- Human factors: integration into patient lifestyle and clinical workflow to support engagement and adoption
- Adaptability: to change questions and mechanisms of capture
Data science solutions:
- Working to overcome the technical barriers which prevent the reporting of more timely information, including multiple heterogeneous datasets held within multiple heterogeneous IT systems, as well as multiple organisational variances
Key steps
Bring a range of expertise and knowledge together at the outset, to ensure developments are fit for purpose.
Ensure potential technical solutions will add real value, be compatible with existing systems and workflows, and be sustainable.
Think creatively about how you can create the conditions for innovation and collaboration at pace.
Impact Stories
The ways in which IHDP’s approach and activities contributed to improved outcomes and impact are shown through impact stories.