Creating a Successful Innovation Strategy

Daniel Cartter, Head of Innovation at Specialist Computer Centres Plc (SCC)

Innovation is a discipline that can enable organisations to generate and execute on an ongoing stream of new ideas that create value. As every organisation is different, the exact design and delivery of an innovation program or initiative will be different for each organisation.

A successful innovation strategy requires full involvement from the organisation’s Executive leaders, such as the CEO, CIOs, CTOs, CDOs and heads of business lines and strategy, and of course with full involvement of customer focused resources.

Here at SCC, Innovation has two core principles:

1., Start with the customer problem, and then work backwards on how to achieve their goals

2. Be stubborn on the vision, but be flexible on the details

An example of SCC’s latest Innovation journey has been with South Warwickshire NHS Trust (SWFT), where SCC & SWFT have collaboratively driven a strategy to bring together an Operational Hospital (SWFT), a Technology Service Provider (SCC) and Academia to create an innovation ecosystem in the form of a Digital Innovation Hub in South Warwickshire’s Stratford-upon-Avon Hospital.

Launched in December 2020, we enter 2022 with 35 Innovation sprints active, a number of them entering practical trials where we are applying cutting edge technology, such as AI, Robotics, Data Analytics and IoT, to meet the needs, problems and opportunities to deliver better digital care.

Our model is simple but powerful — we workshop with the clinical teams and uncover their problems and opportunities to deliver better digital care. We then move through an agile but disciplined process which takes a problem to a solution rapidly.

Some of the key themes our innovation efforts have dialled into are as follows;

• How to keep citizens at home, longer, healthier, more involved with their families and out of the care system
• How to reduce unnecessary presentations at ED
• How to safely discharge patients earlier
• How do we enable “virtual wards”
• How to automate mundane tasks from clinicians

SCC And MySense have been working together since 2019. The MySense health analytics platform empowers people and families to understand wellbeing data and get in front of potential health issues earlier than ever before. MySense empowers clinicians to deliver high quality personalised and preventive care real-time from wherever they are.

During our initial trials, we have been extremely encouraged by the results. We have achieved an average of 15 fewer urgent interventions and an average of £9000 per year, per person. We have also evidenced a 43% reduction in Emergency hospital admissions and 62% reduction on GP contacts. Most importantly, we have estimated an average of an additional six months of independence for each person.

“With MySense we can remotely monitor whether there are any indications of concern or changes in presentation, which helps inform our clinical decision making. We use the information from MySense to intervene early if there are any signs of deterioration and to ensure the right care and support is being offered at the right time.”- SWFT Clinical Practitioner using MySense

Daniel Cartter, Head of Innovation at SCC, a partner of MySense.