Launch of HEE Innovation Competition 2012 

All entries will be judged by an independent judging panel who will generate a shortlist from which winners will then be chosen. All shortlisted entrants will be invited to the Awards Dinner on 10^th October at The Nucleus, Chesterford Research Park where the shortlisted entries will be showcased and winners announced.

The HEE Innovation Competition is an excellent way to showcase new ideas and best practice that is being developed. Chris Armstrong, Marketing Co-ordinator at HEE, will be creating materials to assist in the promotion of the event as well as contacting Trust Communication offices. Further details on the competition including entry form can be found by clicking here.

Any assistance you can provide to help Chris in his awareness raising will be greatly appreciated. Chris can be contacted on tel. 01480 364925 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . He would love to hear from you!

Closing date for entries is 10^th August 2012 Shortlisted entrants will be informed week commencing 10th September.

‘Scout in the Spotlight’

Name: Louise Jamieson

Trust: North East London NHS Foundation Trust

Job title: Business Development and Innovation Lead

1. How long have you been an Innovation Scout? 
Since 2010

2. Why did you volunteer to become an Innovation Scout?
I have worked within service improvement and change management teams within the NHS for 10 years; I quickly recognised the value, quality and number of ideas generated by frontline staff to fix the problems when facilitated to think differently. With enough time and questioning they were usually more innovative with the models of care (if only we could do this..) than we would design at a strategic level. So the scout program could legitimately allow me to access people directly and “go around” problem managers by providing anyone with a direct link to support, by phone. We would then engage managers AFTER we translated the idea, under the heading of “innovation development support”. It was the “in” we always needed – direct to the source so to speak.

Also, there was no mechanism in place for frontline staff to access support to develop their ideas into a sales pitch (business case), recognising that most frontline staff are clinical experts, not business experts and the whole process is scary to them, frustrating and changes daily.

Invariably without support they would come to LT (dragon’s den) with poorly drafted ideas, without finance and more importantly no evidence to support the idea. Not surprising given they are clinical experts, not business experts.  

I thought that the scout role could enable me to provide the “bridge” and “translation service” between front line staff and strategic leads that hold the cash and WANT/NEED to save money and improve quality – QIPP / CIPS.   It works and I can help now to “channel” their passion and frustration into “action”, ensuring that initiatives are in line with commissioning and provider direction. I love the co-dependency of it now, they need us, we need them and the aim always to give them “THE VOICE” they never had, celebrate them and market ourselves and services better.

It’s slowly changing and there is now a PULL for support in SWECS that was never there. My favourite saying “build it and they will come”, which is what we are trying to do for NELFT as a whole.

3. What activities have you undertaken in your Trust in your Scout role to help uncover innovation, spread key messages about innovation and intellectual property etc?

• Initiating innovation talks at team meetings was very helpful and something we learned from the scout network
• Frequent communications pieces to attract and advertise our services was the catalyst, headlines such as “Ever had an idea, but can’t get anyone to listen? Phone xxx-xxx-xxx”
• Having a named direct contact, with a simple process was the key.
  
  Mostly word of mouth set the trail for me. Innovators can sometimes proceed with things as if they are on their own, and may not see that they need to bring people with them to make the change happen (initially) . I’m speaking from personal experience, as I used to do the same back in the black and white days..(LOL)
  
  That said, innovators do talk to each other, and they usually swim in the same pond (not services, but networking, learning and events) and that has provided me with real leads.
• Also I’d say building trust and empowering them through the support process, helped with their confidence, validating that we weren’t crazy or wrong
• Having business support also gave the strategic leads more incentive to take “risk” as they too trusted the rationale was robust and sanity checked
• Lastly, and most importantly TRUST, framing expectations, PROCESS, PROCESS , PROCESS. Keep it simple, give them one person, make it easy for them to access the information they want and guide them to what they need. 9 times out of 10 they then run! Because they have been held in a box for so long
• One more thing, if I had not absorbed and researched the Institute of Innovation “Culture of Innovation” series, I would not have been able to frame our strategy. That gave me grounding, using the seven dimensions for culture as a guide to localise the approach
• Pooling business development resources to ensure idea development can be shared across the business team, but idea reviews / meet and greet / first point of contact for innovation stays as one for continuity
• Bottom up approach essential 
• Having a strategy that outlines what, where and who is important (deliberate and executive sponsored approach), we developed a dragons den approach initially but it scared people off, so we would go with them and deliver the pitch with them, and then various competitions
• More recently using the culture of innovation as a guide, developed an annual competition that ensure involvement from every team across the trust to develop one innovative idea as a group, it’s submitted, through survey monkey all staff vote on the best idea, the winning team get support, finance and development. We then turn them into scouts to increase capacity. This is stalled pending annual budget to attract enough interest.   The hope is to uncover the hidden cohort of innovators who don’t even know they are innovative, rather than the same old faces. It’s also a mandatory process to “help” them to learn to think differently, we also offer facilitation where required.

4. Have you faced any particular challenges in your Scout role, and if so what were / are they and how have you tackled them?

• Delays to the Innovation initiatives due to re-structure, and role changes
• Strategic risk appetite was a problem, but not now
• Once the pull is there, not enough resource / time to do business case and development support for innovation on your own and do the day job for large ideas that hold real weight. So we pooled resources across the team to ensure we could support the demand, but keeping me as the face, idea reviewer and the single point of contact

5. Have you been involved in the further development of any particular innovations?

• Saebo Hospital equipment to improve upper limb motor function for stroke patients, improved productivity, and reduced LOS
• Wound debridement technology for non-healing wounds to improve healing times for chronic wounds
• Protease diagnostic technology for diagnosing specific enzymes in wounds, product was developed with Systagenix to reduce use of inappropriate expensive dressings. CQUINS introduced with large medicines managements savings, and early intervention to prevent long standing non-healing wound
• Ideas under development:
  
  Community Lymphodema management – pathway improvements using new national thinking around Lymphodema management. Care closer to home, reduced commissioning costs, improve quality
  
  Community Enteral feeding management - pathway improvements using new national thinking around enteral feeding. Care closer to home, reduced commissioning costs, improve quality
  
  Telemedicine for wound care management to improve productivity

 6. What do you enjoy most about your participation in the Innovation Scout scheme?

• Helping frontline staff to be heard
• Seeing the rise in confidence levels when their ideas are validated
• Easing their frustration and channelling passion and energy into action that helps them and me feel like we are actually making a difference…