NHS innovation guidance has not arrived to rescue a new policy from twenty three years in a cupboard. It is already doing the quieter job of telling suppliers what responsible digital and data driven health technology should look like, which is less dramatic but still enough to make a filing cabinet nervous.
The official guide, published in January, sets out principles for innovators and NHS users. It asks developers to build safety, transparency, accountability and good governance into their products before anyone presents them for assessment or procurement. In other words, the technology should arrive with its homework done.
NHS innovation guidance gives the cupboard a purpose
That is a sensible plan. It aims to smooth the path between development and procurement, a journey normally slowed by forms that reproduce whenever someone mentions a supplier.
The Department of Clinical Paperclips has welcomed the guide as proof that innovation can be encouraged without first being placed in a cupboard until the cupboard acquires heritage status. Director Mavis Stethoscope said the principles would help ideas approach the NHS in a condition suitable for responsible adult supervision. The department is fictional. The paperwork behaves with spiritual accuracy.
The guide updates an earlier code of conduct for data driven health and care technologies. It does not announce that every useful idea has been granted a fast lane. Instead, it suggests that innovators should understand what the NHS expects and build those expectations into strategy and product development from the start.
Innovation manager Curtis Blenk said the approach had transformed his team’s relationship with procurement. Previously, his team designed the product and then discovered the specification. Now they can discover the specification before designing the product, which has upset the logo department.
The Office of Sensible Inventions has therefore introduced a new opening question: does this technology work safely, transparently and accountably? This replaces the previous opening question, which was reportedly whether the project had a name that sounded confident beside the word transformation.
NHS innovation guidance meets the meeting
Committees will still gather. Forms will still reproduce. People cannot build a responsible system from optimism and a slide deck. However, NHS innovation guidance may help useful work reach the starting line before the celebratory PowerPoint chooses its font.
The real breakthrough is modest. Nobody abolished the filing cabinet. Officials asked it to explain its data strategy, declare conflicts of interest and stop calling itself an ecosystem. It now prepares a consultation on whether handles count as stakeholders.
Source: the guide to good practice for digital and data driven health technologies
