Manama: Most countries and healthcare organisations are failing to implement new ideas in health care as they are unable to set out a clear vision of what can be achieved, establish standards and eliminate old ways of working, a study indicates.
The Global Diffusion of Health Innovation report, published at the Word Innovation Summit for Health (Wish) in the Qatari capital Doha this week, looked at how Qatar, India, Brazil, UK, US, Australia, Spain and South Africa diffused the best new ideas to improve healthcare for their populations.
The study, led by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, is the first time researchers have attempted to chart the conditions that foster the implementation of health innovations around the world.
The report found that winning the hearts and minds of front line staff and patients was key. Countries were in general good at identifying champions of change, engaging patients and addressing clinicians’ concerns. But seven out of the eight countries, where the research was conducted, were poor at eliminating old ways of functioning, adapting innovations to the local context and creating time and space for learning, the study said.
In Australia, Brazil, England, India, South Africa, Spain and the United States there was a gap between what experts said was important for the dissemination of new ideas and what existed in their own country. Only in Qatar, a new and rapidly expanding economy, did the reality match the experts’ ratings.
The gap was largest in England and Spain, where lack of funding for research, development and diffusion of new ideas was seen as a major drawback. In Australia, Brazil and South Africa, incentives and rewards for spreading innovation were seen as inadequate. In the US and India there was a small but consistent gap between the experts’ assessment and the reality.
The research involved interviews with more than 100 healthcare leaders and above 2,000 health professionals that considered innovation in products (new technology, inventions, drugs), practices (new ways of working, clinical protocols) and policies (regulations).
It found different spurs to innovation were favoured in different countries. In the insurance-based health system in the US, experts said incentives and rewards linked to the payment system played an important role, while in England’s publicly-funded National Health Service, standards and protocols were key.
But the experts agreed that one factor — winning the hearts and minds of those on the front line — was critical to the spread of new ideas and ways of working. “Health services everywhere have to change to cope with ageing populations, the growing burden of chronic disease and economic pressures,” Lord Darzi, executive chair of the World Innovation Summit for Health (Wish) in Doha and chair of the Institute for Global Healthcare Innovation at Imperial College, London, UK, said.
“We need creative answers to these problems but even more importantly we need to learn how to spread them so they are rapidly taken up. It simply takes too long at present for new ideas to become common practice,” he said
Greg Parston, chief author of the study, said that the good news was that, regardless of what countries were doing at the national level, there was great consistency among healthcare organisations in terms of the effort they put into identifying champions, engaging patients and addressing clinicians’ concerns at the front line.
“Where they need to do a lot of work is in eliminating old ways of working, adapting innovations to suit the local context and creating time and space for learning,” he said.
Experts in all countries said that IT capability was critical to the spread of new ideas and had been especially important in the emerging economies of Brazil, India and South Africa.
Governments should also consider allocating specific resources to spread innovation and maintain a sense of openness and interest in new ways of working on the front line of care.
“As ultimate users of new products and procedures, and as gatekeepers to patients and the public, professionals at the front line of delivery are seen as having the power to make or break the spread of an innovation,” the report said.
