Innovation is not in short supply in health care. Across the NHS and social care, teams are bursting with ideas to improve outcomes, use data more wisely, and harness technology for better service delivery. But, as anyone who’s tried to put those ideas into practice knows, innovation isn’t just about ambition - it’s about implementation.
In a system as complex and high -stakes as health care, delivery is often where good ideas stall. Legacy systems, policy constraints, fragmented responsibilities and overstretched teams can make even a simple improvement feel impossible. That’s why one of the most powerful ways to turn promising innovations into real progress is by tackling delivery challenges from the very beginning.
Many legacy systems in health care are deeply interwoven into day-to-day operations. A new digital service might look great on paper, but without understanding the dependencies those legacy systems carry – from data access, to operational routines, to reporting requirements - it’s unlikely to succeed in practice.
Early, careful discovery work is essential to map these dependencies. Where possible, solving data retention needs outside of legacy platforms can reduce reliance on outdated infrastructure and create new freedom to innovate.
A great example of doing discovery well is eConsult, a digital health business set up by a group of GPs who understand from daily experience the pain points in delivering patient care.
Opencast worked with eConsult to help it develop its digital triage service, which has lifted pressure in GP and acute care settings. Before eConsult moved to build out the new service, it took time to understand the day-to-day challenges, and did a thorough discovery phase that helped it understand more about what clinicians and patients needed.
Just this year Opencast supported eConsult – now Huma following its acquisition in 2024 – in the development of a new AI-driven GP transcriber. A first step was to identify more about what clinicians needed to ease time pressures on them. Opencast’s design team helped eConsult to define the needs of patients and staff – and this helped inform the development of a prototype of the new service.
We’ve seen again and again that a service may look “done” in one part of the system but can unravel when it meets the needs of an adjacent team or downstream service. In many hospitals, EPR systems were implemented to streamline patient data management within departments like A&E or surgery. These systems often worked well within those departments, appearing “successful.” But issues emerged when adjacent teams such as community care teams, GPs, or even other departments in the same hospital needed to access or update those records.
A whole-journey, end-to-end design approach underpinned by robust user research helps ensure we’re solving real problems for real people: patients, clinicians, administrative staff, and carers alike. When you involve these people early and often, you build services that reflect the full context in which they’ll operate.
In the same spirit of practicality, delivery also benefits from working with established design and technology patterns. Reusable components and shared service approaches reduce the cost of innovation and help teams avoid reinventing the wheel. Identifying the many common tasks and processes across the NHS can surface opportunities to go faster and more consistently next time.
Finally, there’s the sustainability agenda. Innovation that doesn’t consider environmental impact is increasingly out of step with broader public sector priorities. Whether it’s reducing reliance on energy-intensive infrastructure or designing services that minimise travel and waste, net-zero goals should be part of the delivery conversation from the start. Being sustainable can also save money, so efforts to be greener through design can help deliver efficiencies.
When delivery is baked into design, and when teams build with reality not just aspiration in mind, innovation becomes something we don’t just talk about. It becomes something we live and breathe.
Want to talk to us about a similar challenge you’re having and how we might be able to help? Reach out to Laurna.robertson@opencastsoftware.com and we’ll schedule some time to chat.
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