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In my previous blog, I highlighted how patient insight and experience are too often treated as an afterthought in innovation. But the truth is, involving patients from the very start isn’t just beneficial, it’s a game-changer. Their lived experience can be the key to ensuring your innovation is not only effective, but also widely adopted and scaled for real impact. Since then we’ve published a Patient Insight Framework , which is an essential tool to co-design effective innovative services. It provides a clear route map and actionable insights for those driving innovation in their organisation.

Understanding the lived experience of patients and the public from across the communities we serve is crucial to healthcare transformation. You could say a patients role is equally or more important than that of a general practitioner or hospital clinician. Whilst healthcare professionals may diagnose, advise and provide treatment, patients are ultimately responsible for managing their condition long term. From making lifestyle choices and managing medication to scheduling appointments and seeking advice when their circumstances change, they play a central role in their own health and wellbeing. Combined with their first-hand experience of navigating a complex health and social care system, this unique perspective offers invaluable insight into what drives the success of an innovation, and what may stand in the way of its adoption and scale.

Now is the time to listen

If we are to achieve Lord Darzi’s recommendations to move services from hospitals into the community, embrace digital transformation, and shift from treatment to prevention, patients, families and carers can provide valuable insight to inform transformation and sustainable care pathways. If health and care doesn’t invest in patient involvement and importantly listen, it’s ignoring one of its most important stakeholders.

Placing patients at the heart of innovation action plans

How can we effectively identify, engage, and listen to those who need innovation the most during its rollout? By placing patients at the heart of planning and by recognising them as an equal contributor. The Patient Insight Framework is designed to do just that, to help guide and inform a systematic approach to patient involvement through partnerships and equal collaboration.

The framework is targeted at innovation project teams when designing the roll-out of a new innovation – whether it be a medicine, process, technology or a new approach. It provides a route map for adoption and highlights the various important component parts of a delivery team, from the commissioner to the clinician, with a strong focus on the influential role of patients.

In our organisation, we are using it to support our Med Tech Funding Mandate product lead Adam Smith with his planning for the rollout of the latest product APOS, a NICE recommended medical device designed to retrain how a patient walks to reduce pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis. The framework is helping to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients, the greatest satisfaction for clinical staff, and value for money.

Adam Smith, said: “We have used the framework to guide our approach in engaging with patients who live with knee osteoarthritis, and understand how it impacts their quality of life, their experiences of musculoskeletal pathways, and how they feel APOS could be or has been impactful on their health.”

Embedding the framework

Since publication, we have introduced the framework to Health Innovation Network innovation teams, Med Tech Funding Mandate  colleagues, innovators, our pharmaceutical colleagues, researchers and system stakeholders responsible for delivering and transforming services. We continue to discuss its use and embed the tool so that it becomes an integral part of successful innovation adoption.

Health Innovation Manchester colleagues are also using the framework to guide their planning.

Cath Barrow, Senior Programme Development Lead said:  “The PPIE framework is a robust tool that should be part of everyone’s toolkit.  We are anticipating using it as part of our health inequalities programme work in Tameside to ensure that we capture everything we need whilst partnering with local communities.  We feel confident that this tool will enable us to evidence the impact of patient and public interaction through meaningful and purposeful co-design.

“I’ll reiterate that patients, us, our employees, our families, friends and the communities we serve have an important role in sharing experiences and insights and they need to feel heard and valued. Based on our interaction with the health and care system that treats us, we can help to ensure that any planned changes to our pathways, improvements or introduction of innovation considers our needs and identifies approaches that overcome actual and potential barriers to comprehensive innovation adoption”.

Find out more

You can find out more about our approach to this project and read qualitative patient feedback in the accompanying report.

If you are interested in working with us to navigate a pathway change using the framework, please do reach out to  adele.bunch@yhansn.com or graham.prestwich@yhahsn.com. The team has extensive patient involvement capability to support activity.

For support on the frameworks practical use and more insight into how its supporting innovation roll-out, please email adam.smith@yhahsn.com