Good practice:

Co-creating Innovations @ Alder Hey Children’s Hospital

Problem
There is a broad need to accelerate innovation within health settings to benefit patients, the staff and wider community. The Innovation Department has been developed to enable the co-creation of game changing innovations.
Implementation
Activity is divided into two key work streams.
1. Insight & Engagement
This stream provides insight into new opportunities, raises awareness of innovation, delivers a pipeline of problems and secures resources to enable delivery.
2. Commercial Delivery
Working with partners to further develop opportunities identified in the previous work stream to triage, validate, activate and ultimately deploy innovations.
Stakeholders
Alder Hey Hospital – Board, Management, Staff
Industry – Corporates, SMEs
Universities – Researchers, Students
NHS – NHS Staff
Families – Patients, Parents, Community
Case Study
Alder Hey collaborates with a number of partners to address its core aims of impact, reputation and sustainability.
Acorn Partnership:
The partnership have developed a methodology based on LEAN Startup principles; this means that everyone involved, from clinicians to patients, developer to designers, openly collaborate to validate and solve real problems experienced in the NHS to produce high quality digital solutions with impact.
Nova- invests in the founder and takes Clinical Entrepreneurs from an initial idea to building the product.
Deepbridge Capital- provides operational financial and management credentials.

There are 19 members of Alder Hey’s Innovation Department.
A key resource is the 1000m² Innovation Hub within the Hospital.
Funding is provided by the Trust, public grants, charity, venture capital and industrial partnerships.

Alder Hey Innovation has a number of partnerships with external organisations.
Acorn
Over 10 new companies featuring participation from clinicians have been created and invested in by venture capital sources.
Hartree
The first AI driven chat-bot has been co-developed in partnership with Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC).
Health Innovation Exchange
An ERDF funded initiative to support the economic growth of digital and life science companies in the Liverpool City Region

• Diffusion and adoption of technology within the NHS is a recognised challenge.
• Ensuring staff have sufficient time to participate outside of their core clinical duties.

• Crucial to enable sufficient time for clinical staff to participate in innovation in the context of busy work schedules.
• Key that innovation activity is framed sufficiently to demonstrate the value of participation throughout the workforce and in particular for key decision makers/gatekeepers.
• Recognition of participation in the innovation programme as a valid activity for clinical colleagues amongst peers.