Do innovation labs improve health and care services
Find out what we discovered in a rapid evidence review of innovation labs.
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Q commissioned an evidence review of the impact of innovation labs to inform the future development of Q Lab. The review identified shared successes and tensions. Areas for future focus include integrating lab approaches to support sustainable system change and consistent evaluation to build the evidence base.
How do we define innovation labs?
For the purposes of our review, the term ‘innovation labs’ is shorthand for innovation spaces focusing on social innovation and operating within the public sector.
The review included organisations whose innovation functions follow a lab approach, even if they do not call themselves labs.
A lab is somewhere where you can explicitly experiment and learn… You want things to fail in a lab. That’s the whole point.
Evidence from Q Lab
Q commissioned the report to help develop our strategy and approach in Q Lab. For this reason, it does not include evidence about Q Lab, but rather the wider evidence base since 2017.
What do innovation labs achieve?
The review found that there are some areas of consistent, promising work where innovation labs are adding value. They include:
- generating successful innovations
- creating connections between stakeholders across boundaries
- developing the kills, capabilities and mindsets of participants.
[A] review of 17 hospital-based design and innovation labs found that nearly all of them had generated innovations that had been implemented in their local system (meaning the hospital or its parent organisation).
The review concluded that, in order to make improvements at scale, innovation labs need to be part of a wider ecosystem of innovation across the system.
What are the tensions and challenges for a lab approach?
The report highlights the tensions and trade-offs faced by many innovation labs.
To be successful, a lab must consider:
- its position within or outside of organisations, and alignment to strategic priorities
- how to negotiate scope and purpose
- how to apply design and systems thinking in a health and care context.
There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, but it is important to be aware of the consequences of the choices made when negotiating them.
More evidence is needed
The review could not conclude whether innovation labs are successful at improving health and care, due to a limited evidence base, the diversity of labs, the small number of existing labs, and the limited number of published evaluations.
It is not a simple problem to address, but strengthening evaluation practices is essential for this fast-moving field. It will be vital to demonstrate the relevance of innovation labs and support their continued development.
Read the report
How we conducted the review
Innovation Unit, who conducted the review, took a flexible and iterative approach to this research. Because there is a scarcity of published evidence on health and care innovation labs in the UK, they looked at a wider international base and explored beyond the boundaries of health and care.
They conducted semi-structured interviews with people working in innovation labs, and drew on wider resources than published academic literature to ensure we captured timely and relevant insights.
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