NHS Commissioning Board plans new innovation body

The NHS Commissioning Board is planning to fund a new innovation body that can deliver a “system-wide” response to the QIPP challenges facing the NHS.

According to Jim Easton, the Board’s Director of Improvement and Efficiency, the new organisation will commence operation in April 2013.

It will replace the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and the NHS Technology Adoption Centre, as well as the National Cancer Action Team and NHS Diabetes and Kidney Care.

The Board will set priorities for the new body after consulting with providers and commissioners.

The new body will seek to generate practical tools that can be implemented across the NHS, and to help providers and commissioners access existing partnerships such as the Advancing Quality Alliance.

“The Board is trying to set this up as a system resource that responds to the needs of players,” Easton said. It will not be a “top-down change machine”, rather a “system-wide response” to the challenges facing the NHS.

“QIPP is everything,” he argued, echoing Sir David Nicholson’s recent statement that the QIPP agenda would dominate the NHS for “the foreseeable future”.

Easton emphasised the need to shift more care into the community through service redesign, which meant adopting ideas from other sectors and nations.

“This organisation needs to provide hands-on support for great models of care that you can get access to and deploy quickly,” he said.