A new research team will embed itself within the UK’s health and care services to produce usable evidence on new ways of working within months, not years. The problem is that promising innovations in the NHS and social care—such as new models for managing patients with multiple long-term conditions—often stall before reaching the frontline. Traditional evaluations take too long, and decision-makers lack the timely, robust evidence they need to scale up what works or abandon what does not. This team aims to close that gap by combining rapid data collection (including fast-cycle ethnographic observation and real-time access to NHS Digital records) with economic analysis and stakeholder input from clinicians, managers, and patients. If successful, the team’s findings will directly shape how services are delivered across England. A hospital trust considering a new discharge pathway, for example, could receive formative feedback within weeks, not years, allowing it to adjust implementation in real time. The work targets the infrastructure of decision-making itself—making the health system better at learning from its own experiments. This is applied, not fundamental science: the goal is immediate, practical impact on how care is organised and funded.
View original technical description
BACKGROUND. Challenges to health and care systems such as increases in life expectancy and multi-morbidities, developments in treatments and technologies, and wider economic pressures have resulted in a drive at national and local levels to develop and accelerate service innovations to benefit patients and public. Currently, innovations do not spread as fast nor have the same degree of impact as in other sectors – particularly in terms of rapidly shaping frontline service delivery. There is therefore a need for new approaches to evaluation that provide robust evidence to meet these needs in a timely fashion. To address this need, the NIHR HS&DR programme has commissioned a Rapid Evaluation Research Team which is a collaboration between researchers from UCL Department of Applied Health Research and the Nuffield Trust. OUR AIM. We will conduct rapid evaluations of health and care service innovations, in close partnership with those who deliver, manage and use these services, and produce timely findings of national relevance and immediate use to decision-makers. THEORY-DRIVEN APPROACH. Our overall approach will combine the questions, ‘What works at what cost?’ with ‘How and why?’. We will draw on a range of theories (including adoption, diffusion, and sustainability of innovations, knowledge mobilisation, and implementation of change). INNOVATIVE EVALUATION METHODS. We will use innovative qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods (e.g. rapid ethnographic techniques) to facilitate timely analysis of innovations. We have substantial experience and expertise in carrying out research of this kind. Further, we have established valuable links with the Health Research Authority and NHS Digital, to ensure that we can access both qualitative and quantitative data as quickly as possible. SHARING LESSONS FOR RAPID IMPACT. Our research approach will enable provision of formative, as well as summative, feedback to people implementing innovations from the beginning of our evaluations onward. We have extensive networks in health and care sectors and an impressive track record in co-producing meaningful research findings and using a wide range of approaches to reach and influence decision-makers. WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP. Fundamental to our programme is that our work should be developed and conducted in close partnership with stakeholders (including clinicians, managers, and patient and public representatives). We will be guided by a Stakeholder Advisory Board who will help identify cutting edge innovations; and in each of our evaluations we will actively involve clinicians, managers and patient and public representatives throughout the research process (including project design, data collection, analysis and interpretation, and sharing of findings). CONCLUSION. This funding of rapid evaluation teams is undeniably timely and will help health and care services meet a pressing need to become better at learning from innovative ways of working. We believe this call’s objectives can only be achieved through a programme that prioritises dynamic horizon scanning, responsive topic selection, collaborative research design, rapid data collection and analysis, and active approaches to providing formative and summative feedback. We believe our team’s unparalleled expertise, experience, and networks will enable us to deliver effectively on these objectives.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know