Innovations in practice - useful links

Agency for healthcare Research and Quality: taking innovations to scale. This American webpage highlights resources and information to help innovators spread their innovations, and to help adopters find, learn about, and implement new ways to improve care in their organizations. 

Centre for Nursing Innovation. The Centre for Nursing Innovation is a unique collaboration and coalition between the South West Wales region’s two major Health Boards and the College of Human and Health Sciences at Swansea University. It facilitates governance, captures evidence, and structures the progression of work that seeks to improve nursing care.  Ultimately it seeks to make a positive difference to nursing and healthcare practice for service users and providers, by encouraging and supporting innovations in nursing theory, practice, research and education.

Centre for Innovation in Health Management. The Centre for Innovation in Health Management is a network of doctors, public sector managers, organisational change consultants and academics, who are passionate about improving public services. The CIHM is situated in Leeds University Business School, UK.

HSC Innovations. HSC Innovations provides an innovation management service for Health and Social Care employees throughout Northern Ireland. The service aims to ensure that ideas that have the potential to improve patient care or offer benefits to healthcare providers are developed.

Innovation Unit. As a not-for-profit social enterprise, the Innovation Unit for public services is committed to using the power of innovation to solve social challenges. We have a strong track record of supporting leaders and organisations delivering public services to see and do things differently. They come to us with a problem and we empower them to achieve radically different solutions that offer better outcomes for lower costs.

National Innovation Centre. The NHS National Innovation Centre (NIC) supports innovators, commissioners, and clinicians to speed up the development and use of innovations that will benefit the NHS.

National Institute for Health Research Invention for Innovation (i4i) Programme. i4i provides investment in, and improved identification of, promising healthcare technologies in order to accelerate the development of new healthcare products for the 21st century. i4i funds translational research, extending between basic research and pre-clinical trials or health technology assessments. This part of the innovation process is an area of high technological and business risk, and the projects funded by i4i reflect this.

The National Leadership and Innovation Agency for Healthcare. This agency is part of NHS Wales and shares expertise, knowledge and resources to support NHS Wales staff in improving patient care.

NHS Innovation Hubs. England has eight regional NHS Innovation Centres (hubs), aligned to Regional Development Agency and Strategic Health Authority boundaries. They can all be accessed via this site. The 8 NHS Innovations Hubs are helping to deliver improved care and better outcomes for patients.

Nurse First. Nurse First transforms community health by creating a movement of frontline innovators. We work with healthcare professionals to develop them in: leadership, innovation, business and finance skills, and entrepreneurship. We do this through a practical development programme that runs over 12 months and includes 21 days of residential development and an intensive coacing programme.

Patients First Programme - Supporting Nurse-led Innovation in Practice. This programme has been made possible by a new partnership between FoNS and the Burdett Trust for Nursing. The Programme provides support and facilitation to clinically based nurse-led teams to help them to develop, implement and evaluate locally focused innovations that improve patient care in any healthcare setting across the UK.

People in Research. Part of Involve, this database allows members of the public to search for opportunities to find out about research activities, and for researchers to register and publicise research opportunities.

Scottish Health Innovations Ltd (SHIL). Scottish Health Innovations Ltd works in partnership with NHS Scotland to protect and develop new innovations that come from healthcare professionals. By developing these ideas, SHIL creates new products and technologies that will improve patient care and generate income for NHS Scotland.

Service innovation, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement aims to support the NHS transform healthcare for patients and the public. This area of the website is about service innovation – the how, the what and the why. Within this area are two important publications

Spread and adoption tool, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. The tool aims to help staff to increase the scale and pace of the sustainable spread and adoption of innovation and improvements in the NHS.