The importance of innovation and staying at the forefront of new developments
This month we’re looking at why #InnovationMatters. To introduce this topic, Ian Andrews, NOE CPC's Technical Director, discusses the importance of innovation and staying at the forefront of new developments.
Change is a constant background hum in the NHS. Whether that's the nature of the organisation itself, or the treatments and therapies constantly being developed, tested, and rolled out for use, or the new ways we turn the lens of analysis back on ourselves to understand better what we do and how we do it – we never stand still. Nor should we – there is constant pressure on us to ensure that we are doing the right things, and doing things right – this is why #InnovationMatters.
As the nature of the work we do has become more complex over the past few years we have felt the pressure to apply more rigour to how we manage ourselves, and how we treat our responsibilities towards our customers' data. We have turned the lens of analysis back on ourselves to see where we could innovate, improve, adapt, and change for the better.
We have sought accreditation against several ISO standards to assure ourselves we are doing things right – new ground for the organisation - and to give us some confidence around our cybersecurity posture, an area where not all innovations are positive for people like us. New approaches to accreditation emerging from the Department of Health and Social Care like framework accreditation and the CCIAF framework have required us to look at how we manage our processes and how we build quality into everything we do here at NOE CPC – and how we can manage the additional burden of maintaining those accreditations without impacting our core mission.
Change comes from all angles too. The pace of technological change is accelerating now with the advent of AI tools, systematic data gathering, and machine learning, requiring us to be alert to and alive to the opportunities and dangers the AI revolution will bring to how we work, how we analyse our data and how we think about our tasks. These tools could be a labour-saving miracle – or they could be a disaster if implemented without care and consideration. We are on the cusp of a technological revolution and keeping our sails trimmed to the winds of change will be no easy task. However we choose to set our course, those changes will happen around us – we cannot ignore them.
#InnovationMatters because it's happening around us, all the time, increasingly fast, and it's the only real chance that we will achieve the goal of doing more, better, with less.
It's hard, looking back on what I have written above, not to fear change. And with the disruption, annoyances, and rough edges it brings perhaps we are wise to do so in moderation. But for me at least, it's impossible not to be just a little excited by it too...