Co-development and Collaboration – The Ambition from Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the interface between the commercial sector and the National Health Service (NHS) is often not an easy one to navigate, from both directions. Competing pressures on clinician time (exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic) and complex processes which can seem daunting to potential industry partners are viewed as a barrier to joint working. Conversely, a relationship which might be perceived by some NHS colleagues as one solely based around selling (a HealthTech firm) and buying (the health service) does not necessarily engender the buy-in needed from key stakeholders on the ground.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is one of the largest NHS organisations in the country, and has an ambitious vision to be positioned as the UK’s leading NHS trust for innovation and the healthcare innovation partner of choice for industry. Key to this ambition is co-development with industry – reframing the relationships we form with technology providers away from that of being purely transactional, towards one of mutual benefit.
An important local development to support joint working in Manchester is the recent funding award that MFT, with partners, received from the Health Foundation, to establish a Manchester Innovation Hub. One of four Innovation Hubs to be established across the country, they will individually, and as a network, aim to build centres of expertise and support within NHS provider organisations to help them, and their local health systems, become better adopters of innovation. Manchester Innovation Hub will drive the implementation of health care innovation by delivering five inter-related work packages: people, process, culture, technology, and co-production and evaluation.
Arguably, the most important for industry partners engaging with the Manchester Innovation Hub is the “process” – the development of a single framework (spanning across MFT’s 10 hospitals and managed clinical services) for prioritisation, project initiation, real-world evaluation, and case for change development. This will provide a single pathway for evidenced technologies which have been judged to meet the needs of our local population.
For the Manchester Innovation Hub, co-development with technology providers will be built into the earliest stages of this process cycle, as we recognise that addressing implementation challenges faced by NHS organisations is only possible with support, training, and partnership with industry colleagues.
I also wanted to highlight the “culture” work package, which aims to ensure that our diverse workforce increasingly see innovation and adoption as part of their day job, including the specific development of champions for the Hub and digital innovation which will support our reach into every part of the organisation. On a personal level, I’m conscious I need to continuously learn, and as part of this, I’m thrilled to have recently been appointed as a member of the NICE Medical Technologies Advisory Committee, which leads MedTech guidance development and makes recommendations to NICE. I’m keen to ensure that learning from this is fed back for the benefit of both my Trust colleagues and industry partners.
Whilst the Manchester Innovation Hub will support the adoption of evidenced innovation, some industry partners will undoubtably be at earlier stages of their development cycle. The MFT Diagnostics and Technology Accelerator (DiTA) was established in 2018 to support evidence generation of commercially supplied MedTech. Acting as a crucial component of the COVID-19 National DiagnOstic Research and Evaluation Platform (CONDOR), which was co-led by MFT and evaluated more than 25 new tests for COVID-19, DiTA is now returning to the “day job” and keen to engage with companies who wish to explore how we can help identify evidence gaps and collaborate to address these.
Part of DiTA’s core aims, shared by the Manchester Innovation Hub, are co-development, partnership, and collaboration. We see DiTA as a feeder route for technologies into the Innovation Hub, providing a pathway from evidence generation, to fully evidenced products, and onto implementation through the Manchester Innovation Hub – a full service pipeline that we hope will prove attractive to ABHI members.
In summary, and to paraphrase Jane Austin again (badly!), collaboration is indeed a manoeuvring business - but only by maintaining an effective dialogue between the commercial sector and NHS organisations can these manoeuvres be effectively managed to build mutual benefit for both sides.
Dr Katherine Boylan, Head of Innovation, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
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