Liverpool City Region is renowned for its Health and Life Science sector, with a strong cluster of NHS Trusts, key business enablers, expertise within local universities and business leaders with a keen eye for innovation.
In this blog we’ll be looking at the ways in which local Health Tech businesses can put themselves on the map. We’ll be addressing some of the key barriers to innovation and adoption, areas businesses can focus on to improve innovation and adoption and some of the support and enablers business can leverage for quicker routes to market.
Barriers to innovation and adoption
Recent insights by Growth Platform* highlights some of the key barriers that businesses are facing, including but not limited to:
- Costs of regulations and IP can be a major barrier
- Access to people in the system and their time is a major barrier to the speed of adoption
- No two health and care organisations are the same
- Access to funding to support early-stage development and increasingly demanding regulatory requirements
- Access to funding for transformation and system change, not just new innovations
It is crucial that the healthcare ecosystem encourages a whole system approach when it comes to breaking down some of these barriers to entry, rather than allowing one team within an organisation to be responsible for innovation. Similarly, collaboration is crucial to bring together key expertise from different businesses and support organisations to not only increase the speed of innovation but increase the speed of adoption.
However, innovators must work closely with local organisations and NHS trusts to understand the current need of innovation to ensure that products and solutions created benefit all those involved and contribute to elevating the offering of the system.
Overcoming challenges
Despite such barriers there are some steps businesses can take to break down such barriers to entry:
- Co-creation is key and SMEs need to engage the system at the early stages to work together on solutions
- The time is now! There’s a real opportunity and appetite to collaborate locally and the pandemic has allowed innovation and adoption of innovation to speed up
- Businesses must learn from others nationally and internationally to see what they do well and whether we can replicate anything locally and really understand the different processes and teams that need to be engaged with the adoption process
For examples of local businesses in the City Region who have taken leaps into developing their innovation despite the challenges of Covid-19, check out our latest case studies for inspiration into some additional steps you could take.
Leveraging the business support ecosystem
Liverpool City Region recognises that businesses can’t overcome these challenges alone, that’s why there is a strong eco-system of enablers which can support businesses through this process:
- Universities – health economics expertise and support, potential partners for innovation funding.
- Innovation Agency – support to understand local needs of trusts, support in creation of funding bids.
- Liverpool Health Partners – support to understand local needs of trusts.
- Growth Platform – support to connect needs with local business base, support for funding opportunities for businesses.
- Bionow – membership organisation to support businesses in the sector
- Medilink – membership organisation to support businesses in the sector
- Health Matters programme
Routes of communication are crucial to the system and industry and our City Region’s enablers are on hand to be able to connect you to the most relevant decision makers to take your idea to innovation and onto market. These key enablers are also here to help facilitate conversations between businesses and key stakeholders within the industry, opening doors which may have previously been inaccessible.
These are just some of the key support provided by the Health Matters programme. To find out more about the programme and how it could help you, get in touch with a member of our team today.
*Information in this blog has been taken from Exploring Adaption and Innovation in the Health & Case Sector across Liverpool City Region report. To read the report, click here.
