The Health Service Executive in Ireland has published a framework for health innovation, outlining its vision, along with plans for governance, lifecycle, and implementation pathways. Reportedly co-designed by staff and leaders from across the health system, HSE shares requirements to enable and sustain innovation, with an aim to provide the foundation for these to be translated into action.
HSE’s vision is built around six guiding principles: workforce enablement, digital and data infrastructure, partnerships and ecosystem, communication and culture, enabling policies and funding, and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. It highlights new innovation governance arrangements to oversee innovation, reporting to the HSE senior leadership team on a quarterly basis, with responsibilities to provide oversight for major innovations, create clear guidelines and processes to evaluate new ideas, and establish a clear path for proven innovations.
“Innovation in healthcare doesn’t happen in a straight line,” HSE reports. “It’s a changing cycle that reacts to new needs, new evidence, and feedback from the system.” With this in mind, it presents its lifecycle of innovation, beginning with gaps and needs, through to prioritisation, ideation and identification, incubation and validation, evaluation and evidence generation, and adoption and scale. “It’s important to note that not all types of innovations have to go through all the stages….The process must allow for early exits, pausing, or going back to earlier stages when new insights come up or circumstances change a lot,” HSE adds.
As part of delivering its innovation framework, there is a need to establish shared support infrastructure, according to HSE, with plans to develop user and technical requirements for an innovation repository to provide access to information on innovation projects, as well as available support and tools. This will need to consider integration requirements with existing systems, the implementation of a technical solution for migration of historical data, the implementation of processes for the repository such as data entry and access, and the development of a service catalogue to document requirements.
Clear “go/no-go” criteria will be developed as part of a formal stage-gate process, HSE elaborates, whilst a fast-track mechanism will be put in place for innovations addressing critical or emergency risks, and a resource allocation model will be built to allow for an estimation of resource and cost implications associated with progressing innovations through each stage of the innovation pathway. Nationally agreed tools for innovation scoring across domains such as effectiveness, safety, and usability, will be implemented alongside metrics to “objectively” measure benefits and return on investment. These will cover evaluation templates appropriate for different scales and types of innovation, and the development of a consistent evaluation process with training to ensure consistent application, it states.
Innovation and culture capabilities will be promoted, with a network of innovation champions planned to support innovation and empower staff to initiate or participate in innovation activities. An approach to engage external providers is also outlined, with key considerations across market consultations to understand external supports available, potential procurement models available to access external supports, and the legal and procurement requirements of innovation partnerships. HSE also commits to ensuring innovators are aware of available innovation funding and how to access it, including mapping available funding sources to identify gaps where certain stages of innovation are under-funded.
Initial priority for Q2-Q3 2026 will be granted to establish structured innovation governance arrangements, the innovation repository, and the creation of clear innovation pathways, HSE notes, to ensure necessary infrastructure is in place “to support and enable healthcare teams to innovate in areas of greatest need as they prepare for the new national service planning period”. Work will then progress in parallel across all other priority areas throughout the remainder of 2026, and into the beginning stages of 2027.
Wider trend: NHS innovation
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust has set out plans for 2026/27 in its annual digital plan, with an “ambitious roadmap” intended to help the trust leverage digital technology as a primary enabler to achieve its wider goals. Ambitions for the next year, it says, include delivering a single trust-wide digital portfolio, optimising core clinical systems, expanding digitally enabled care, and achieving a four-to-six percent administrative time reduction in pilot areas through the adoption of AI-supported documentation.
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has shared plans for its intelligent automation programme, noting progress around outpatient admin automation, ambient voice tech, Copilot, robotic process automation, and the development of a trust automation support offer. A market engagement has been completed with potential suppliers for the automation of outpatients administration, the trust notes, with a procurement lead time estimated at three-to-six months. A trial of AVT with expansion into the emergency department and onboarding of additional users has led to the development of a business case, with roll out planned for Q3, according to UHS. 185 Copilot licenses have so far been deployed, and a SharePoint site has been used to create an automation hub featuring best practice and support in use of automation tools.
Health Innovation West of England has launched a primary care accelerator, in partnership with One Care, the GP federation for general practice in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. The programme looks to attract innovators and digital solutions that address pressures in primary care, workforce efficiency, neighbourhood working, and the management of long-term conditions and frailty. It hopes to support innovations enter the primary care market and gain insights and guidance from general practice. Through a five-day accelerator programme, innovators will be supported with a deep understanding of primary care, clinical and operational expertise, support with how to present solutions to primary care stakeholders effectively, and to understand funding and future developments in primary care.
