The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) recently hosted a webinar discussing factors that play a role in the diffusion of healthcare innovation, as well as those that may cause limitations, based on evidence collected from case studies.
The webinar, entitled ‘Diffusion of Healthcare Innovation’, took place as part of the ‘Safer Care Accelerator’ series by the Leading Health Systems Network (LHSN). LHSN is an initiative of WISH that brings together healthcare leaders and industry experts to identify and discuss areas of improvement in healthcare systems. The webinar was led by Dr Matthew Harris, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Public Health Medicine, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London and Hannah Patel, Policy Fellow, Centre for Health Policy, Institute for Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London.
It is well known that it takes over 17 years for healthcare innovations to be put into practice. The popular question is, ‘why does it take so long?’ The WISH webinar explored the barriers and enablers to the successful diffusion of innovation, drawing on specific case studies as well as large-scale quantitative and qualitative research. It also provided advice to policymakers and frontline caregivers on how to harness the benefits of innovation in healthcare.
The webinar highlighted research conducted since the launch of the Global Diffusion of Healthcare Innovation (GDHI) program in 2012. GDHI is a research program funded by Qatar Foundation (QF), which explores how innovation spreads between countries. It also looks at how innovations could be adapted to align with the needs of frontline healthcare workers from around the world.
Dr Harris, said, “The adoption of innovations in healthcare is a process of interaction and persuasion, and an issue of mutually beneficial relationships and resources. It’s a complex process. There needs to be an evidence base for the innovation, adopters have to want to adopt it, and it needs to be adaptable to local contexts. Sometimes as much, if not more, effort often goes into scaling an innovation as it does to developing it.”
Egbert Schillings, CEO of WISH, said, “Since the inception of WISH, this body of research on the diffusion of innovation has been at the center of the program; it’s obvious why – an innovation that neither spreads nor scales is not really viable, but often the failure to take off has less to do with the merits of an idea than organizational barriers. We need to understand what those are so we can help get the right ideas implemented where they can do the most good for the benefit of patients.”
