• NIA Innovations & COVID-19
  • Newsletter Sign-Up
  • FAQs
  • Case Studies
  • Contact Us
NIANIANIANIA
  • About
    • What the NIA offers
    • Selection Process
    • Core Team
    • Mentors
    • Partners
    • Collaborate
    • Apply
  • Fellows and Innovations
    • Overview
    • Fellows
    • Innovations
    • Alumni
  • Latest
    • Events
    • News & blogs

Achieving sustained adoption: the story of EPISCISSORS-60

    Home Blogs Achieving sustained adoption: the story of EPISCISSORS-60
    NextPrevious

    Achieving sustained adoption: the story of EPISCISSORS-60

    By admin | Blogs | Comments are Closed | 13 May, 2019 | 0

    NHS Innovation Accelerator Alumni, Dharmesh Kapoor, reflects on the challenges of achieving sustained adoption in the NHS through his ongoing journey with patient safety innovation, EPISCISSORS-60.

    “I was delighted when EPISCISSORS-60 was selected for the first ever cohort of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) in the summer of 2015. It was a great moment to present this patient safety innovation to an audience that included Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England and Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, former National Medical Director of NHS England and former Chair of the NIA Programme Board.

    “As a practising consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, I knew how important it was for clinicians to be able to test a product before committing valuable NHS resources to buying it. I was able to use my NIA bursary to provide free EPISCISSORS-60 for trialling to almost 100 maternity units in England. This helped us in getting traction among potential users and some converted into sales.

    “However, we knew we faced a fundamental disadvantage. If the EPISCISSORS-60 reduced OASIS (obstetric anal sphincter injuries), hospitals would lose income from repairing these injuries. It was near impossible to make a cogent business case for using the EPISCISSORS-60.

    “There had to be an incentive for NHS trusts to promote best practice (EPISCISSORS-60 fulfil the guidance for performing a 60-degree episiotomy from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists).

    “NIA National Director, Amanda Begley and Deputy Director, Laura Boyd, left no stone unturned to help us explore every avenue to accelerate the adoption of EPISCISSORS-60. They called in personal favours to contact decision makers. We were all very disappointed when our efforts to convince the NHS pricing team to consider a Best Practice Tariff for the EPISCISSORS-60 failed.

    “A meeting with Noel Gordon (NIA mentor), during a MedTech trip to Israel, was a godsend. Noel was serving as a Non-Executive Director on NHS England’s Board after a long and distinguished career in the private sector. He was passionate about the NIA as a way to improve patient care and achieve cost savings. He was concerned that the NHS was encouraging perverse incentives like ‘payment by results’ (PBR) to dissuade trusts from adopting patient safety innovations. He raised the issue with the NHS England Board, and they agreed to create a new funding initiative called the Innovation and Technology Tariff (ITT). This would reimburse the cost of innovations with proven efficacy to NHS trusts in England.

    “We were thrilled when the EPISCISSORS-60 was chosen for the first wave of the ITT in 2017. As we had hoped, the adoption of EPISCISSORS-60 accelerated like a rocket. We moved from being in 10-15% of NHS trusts in England to more than 70%. The cost savings to the NHS in year one exceeded £25 million.

    “Sustained adoption is a huge challenge for any innovation, as people often revert to older practices once the incentive for adoption is withdrawn. We were seeing this in real time with some trusts declining to adopt EPISCISSORS-60 as the business case was not viable with one year left on the ITT.

    “This was despite Sir Bruce forcefully making the case for adoption of proven patient safety innovations to be made mandatory across the NHS, much like they are in the airline industry.

    “We raised these concerns with NHS England. Once again, the NIA team pulled out all the stops to endorse our concerns, and our recommendation that a sustained funding structure be put into place to promote sustained adoption.

    “I am pleased to report that thanks to a further extension of the ITT, EPISCISSORS-60 will be available for trusts to purchase for free for an additional year. We also now have NICE Medical Technology Guidance commissioned for EPISCISSORS-60. As envisaged in the NHS Long Term Plan, this will carry a funding mandate that will ensure that sustained adoption.”

    For more information about EPISCISSORS-60, visit www.nhsaccelerator.com/fellows-and-mentors/dharmesh-kapoor/

    No tags.

    Related Posts

    • The new palliative care gold standard

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      By: Julia Riley The EIU’s recent Quality of Death report praised palliative care in the UK as the best in the world, citing the quality and availability of services provided by the NHS and hospice movement as “second toRead more

    • Nervecentre Software win prestigious Building Better Healthcare Award

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Nervecentre Software in partnership with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust have won the prestigious award for ‘Best Communications and IT product’ at the Building Better Healthcare Awards, held on 4th November 2015, The award isRead more

    • Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust live with Nervecentre electronic observations

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has now deployed Nervecentre Electronic Observations software using mobiles devices across the hospitals to improve patient safety and communications. Funded through the Nursing Technology Fund, Electronic Observations are now liveRead more

    • Nervecentre in Australia… Success at the ISRRS Symposium in Melbourne


      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Written by Jim Trueman Attendees of the symposium held by the International Society for Rapid Response Systems and Medical Emergency Teams are all clinicians that intuitively recognise the problems that Nervecentre was designed to solve. Read more

    • i-THRIVE: Manchester and Salford’s Integrated Access and Care Pathways 


      By admin | Comments are Closed

      What was the problem you were trying to solve? Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT) provide child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) for Manchester and Salford. The move towards Integrated Access andRead more

    • Coordinate My Care Integrates Care Plans into Emis Web

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Urgent care plans for thousands of London’s most vulnerable patients care are now just a click away for almost 1,000 of their GPs. Plan sharing scheme Coordinate my Care will now be available to 962Read more

    • OWise breast cancer app proven to be effective tool in cancer treatment process

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Innovative patient support app shown in peer-reviewed medical journal to improve patient-doctor interactions and is recommended by 90% of patients and clinicians OWise breast cancer, the first mobile app to offer patients personalised medical supportRead more

    • OBH featured in TeleMedicine Magazine

      By admin | Comments are Closed

      Telemedicine Magazine included an article on Outcome Based Healthcare (OBH) in their series focusing on the growing trend of doctors getting involved with healthcare start-ups. Rupert, OBH CEO, explained that during his time as aRead more

    NextPrevious
    Contact Us
    nia@uclpartners.com
    @NHSAccelerator
    Newsletter Sign-Up
    Terms and Conditions | Privacy and Cookies
    NHS Innovation Accerlator
    Copyright 2017 NHS Innovation Accelerator
    • Menu
      • Latest
      • Case Studies
      • News and Events
      • Press and Media
      • FAQs (OLD)
      • Contact Us
    • Apply
    • Fellows and Innovations
      • Fellows
      • Innovations
    • Collaborate
    • Accelerator
      • Partners
      • What the NIA offers
      • Selection Process
      • Mentors
    NIA