What do emerging treatments for cancer tell us about how the NHS can best spread innovation?

This article was organised and fully funded by Bristol Myers Squibb, as a follow-up to a roundtable hosted in collaboration with HSJ. This article has been developed by HSJ and Bristol Myers Squibb has reviewed the article to check for accuracy. This article has no promotional intent. Bristol Myers Squibb does not intend to encourage the use of, or advocate the promotion of, its products through the objectives of this article.

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Treatments for cancer are rapidly evolving, potentially offering better outcomes. Quickly transferring breakthroughs into clinical practice remains challenging, however. In this respect, innovation in cancer is similar to innovations more broadly in the NHS. Often there are questions about how best to quickly implement new ways of doing things uniformly across an organisation – and indeed beyond, across the service.

So what do emerging treatments for cancer tell us about how the NHS can best adopt and spread innovation? That was the topic on the agenda for a recent HSJ  roundtable held in association with Bristol Myers Squibb. It brought together a small panel of experts, who identified important ingredients for successful innovation in healthcare: among them, clinician involvement, patient involvement, and better means of communication.