are grand possibilities at the end of the rainbow for patients. Beyond this, we look at procurement. How do you write specifications for what you want to achieve? How do you contract for it? In the case of the NHS, how do you identify suitable SMEs out there doing smart things? It might be that what the NHS is looking for does not yet exist, or it might exist but the buyer does not know about it. The needs are not always radical, looking for something totally new. Articulating demand is crucial to identifying unmet needs and translating them into specific requirements. Intermediaries can support this demand articulation process. But it works both ways. The SMEs can look at the NHS and see this huge organisation and not know where to go, who to talk to. When we look at the NHS as an entity, we are talking about lots of different organisations. It could be a hospital, it could be an integrated care board, it could be a primary care network of GPs. They have their own challenges, and are looking for solutions to particular issues. The situation is exacerbated by SMEs’ lack of market reputation and NHS procurement rules and practices. SMEs do not speak the same language as the bureaucracy of the NHS. They could fear they have a lack of credibility. Within the large organisations, there can be aversion to risk, and SMEs can be riskaverse too, lacking incentives to try something new. As intermediary organisations, HINs can ease the relationship and help to resolve these issues. They can address some the challenges and act as a catalyst for change. They learn about what works and what does not and change how the system operates over time. They can seek to create new processes and structures, or adjust existing ones, to support innovation implementation. They transform how public organisations such as the NHS ask for, procure, and adopt innovations. We found that early in the process intermediaries identified institutional failures specific to SME firms, notably the weak connectivity to hospitals, and their limited ability to participate in NHS contracting. They promoted locally proven innovations as candidates for fasttracked nationwide adoption and lobbied senior NHS executives and policy-makers regarding the challenges facing SMEs in accessing the NHS and finance. Health Innovation North West Coast ran educational workshops targeting clinicians and NHS staff to foster a climate of innovation and openness to working with innovators, and tackle risk aversion among them. They also ran workshops for SMEs to educate them on how the NHS works. In sum, the intermediaries promote institutional change by exposing problems, imagining future ways of accessing innovation, and mobilising resources to transition to them. POSITIVE OUTCOMES We have been able to feed back on the challenges and positive results of HINs. Among the projects Health Innovation North West Coast helped with were 3D printing solutions to areas including heart surgeries and limb prosthetics to improve care delivery and reduce operating costs; an app for real-time information and remote diagnosis of children ailments; latex-free surgical gloves; and a portable ultrasound for use in primary care to speed up patient diagnosis and referral times. We also identified areas where the collaboration between innovation intermediaries, buyers, and suppliers could be improved. The ideal outcome is that our advice improves procurement of innovation, that it increases the scale and the pace at which new products enter the NHS and therefore improve health services and health outcomes. It leads to innovation on a practical level for these organisations, and anyone who encounters them. For the NHS, you might benefit from better care for whatever ailment you have. Resource productivity benefits arising from innovation also mean that public healthcare is affordable. From a supplier perspective, if you are a small company who has not dealt with the NHS before, you get a new customer, new sales, you get your product being known within the NHS, you open yourself to other markets. Everyone benefits. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 13 Kostas Selviaridis is a Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management in the Department of Management Science. His research focuses on public contracting and its role in promoting innovation, resilience, and sustainability goals in supply chains. k.selviaridis@lancaster.ac.uk Martin Spring is Professor of Operations Management in the Department of Management Science. He is also Lancaster University Management School Associate Dean for Engagement. m.spring@lancaster.ac.uk This article is partly based on the paper Facilitating public procurement of innovation in the UK defence and health sectors: Innovation intermediaries as institutional entrepreneurs, by Professors Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring, of Lancaster University Management School; and Professor Alan Hughes, of Imperial College Business School. It is published in the journal Research Policy.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=