InnovationManager – a custom-built innovation management system for technology development projects

Cloud-based system developed in house within the NHS to help NHS organisation to innovation more efficiently and effectively.

Project Partners

NIHR Devices for Dignity HRC

Health and Care Requirement

The complexity of the innovation pathway in the NHS requires tools to contribute to the efficient working of the organisation, and information sharing within and across teams, when managing a complex portfolio of projects and activities.

The Project Concept

D4D has developed an effective model for technology innovation management. It ensures all important stakeholders are involved in any new product development project, and has demonstrated potential for this model to lead to an acceleration of new products to market. To satisfy the need to collaboratively manage the innovation activities in D4D, and following the evaluation and rejection of different commercial IT tools, a new web application named InnovationManager was developed in-house.

InnovationManager is a cloud-based platform that helps NHS organisations to innovate more efficiently and effectively. This online tool supports productive collaboration, secure information sharing and active stakeholders’ involvement along the innovation pathway: from the identification of the unmet need to the commercialisation and adoption of the final product.

This digital solution has a modular design, including nine modules dedicated to different key activities in the innovation process: unmet needs identification and validation, collaboration requests, project management, contacts repository, grant applications monitoring, scientific publications, user management, performance indicators and tasks.

In January 2020, the platform was also adopted by the NIHR Children and Young People MedTech Co-operative to manage their project portfolio.

D4D are providing:

  • User needs analysis
  • System design
  • Technical development and maintenance
  • Continuous improvement cycles
  • Training

Next stage of development:

Future work will explore scaling-up and commercial options for this valuable tool, working towards increasing the adoption of InnovationManager in other NHS organisations for whom innovation is a priority.