By Alison Tonge, Executive Director of Strategy, Planning and Innovation, NHS Arden & GEM CSU
With innovation expected to be a key focus of the 10-Year Health Plan, NHS Arden & GEM’s Strategy, Innovation and Planning team takes a look at their three-year journey to embed an organisational culture of innovation which is enabling transformational solutions to be developed.
Innovation has been a driving force behind the NHS since its inception in 1948, shaping advances in patient care, efficiency and medical progress. Over the decades, the NHS has been a pioneer in healthcare innovation and the need for fresh, transformative approaches continues to grow.
Innovation is expected to feature prominently in the forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan, which will outline how we transform the NHS by delivering three key shifts: moving care from hospitals to communities, shifting focus from treating illness to preventing it and making greater use of technology. These shifts won’t occur in isolation. They’ll be embedded within the new NHS operating model, influencing its metrics, accountabilities and funding flows.
While previous national strategies, transformation programmes and targeted funding initiatives have laid important groundwork, the scale of change ahead remains substantial. The 10-Year Health Plan will not only detail these changes but will also emphasise the need for a whole-system approach, one built on shared accountability, strong capabilities and the knowledge needed to deliver lasting impact.
At NHS Arden & GEM, we recognise that delivering lasting impact requires more than one-off initiatives or pilot programmes; it requires a fully embedded culture of innovation.
What do we mean by innovation?
Innovation means taking a structured, systematic approach to tackling the most pressing challenges in health and care – challenges that, if solved, could unlock significant value. These challenges often demand fresh solutions, which may involve new technologies, partnerships, cross-functional collaboration or entirely new ways of working.
To succeed, we believe we need a framework that supports the development, testing and scaling of these solutions – ensuring they deliver on the three major shifts we aim to achieve.
We’re particularly focused on how innovation capabilities and methods can be embedded into everyday operations. Understanding what these capabilities require, and running an innovation function for the past few years, has given us valuable insights into what works and what needs to evolve.
Since 2022, we've been on a journey to reimagine our innovation approach: assessing, challenging and refining it across the organisation. Today, we're proud to share the progress we’ve made, the lessons we've learned, and the bold actions we're taking to become a leading-edge organisation for innovation in health and care.
Where we started: laying the groundwork for innovation
In late 2022, we undertook an extensive assessment of our innovation culture and capabilities. Using a comprehensive Innovation Maturity Matrix, we explored six critical domains:
- Vision and leadership
- Structure, roles and responsibilities
- Governance and funding
- People and capabilities
- Process
- Culture and engagement.
The findings gave us a clear baseline and a powerful case for change. Two years later, following the establishment of a dedicated Strategy, Innovation and Planning function, we have re-assessed our maturity against the same framework to measure progress and set our course for the future.
Progress highlights: embedding innovation across the organisation
Clearer vision and stronger leadership
While staff previously felt that innovation was encouraged but lacked a clear direction, our 2025 assessment reflects significant improvement. Vision and purpose are now better aligned across teams, enabling more consistent and confident innovation.
As Alison Tonge, Executive Director of Strategy, Innovation and Planning, explains:
“Embedding innovation across a complex organisation is a cultural challenge as much as a strategic one. We're seeing growing clarity and confidence in how teams connect their ideas to our broader mission.”
A strengthened innovation ecosystem
We’ve placed great focus on clarifying roles, responsibilities and structures. While work remains to ensure consistency across all our directorates, a stronger foundation is now in place – one that reflects innovation as a collective, cross-organisational endeavour.
Improving governance and access to investment
Governance and funding pathways have historically presented challenges. In response, we’ve introduced clearer mechanisms to assess, track and invest in innovation – though we recognise the need to make these more visible and accessible to staff at all levels.
Nurturing skills and capabilities
Our reassessment shows improved capability across key innovation activities: identifying customer needs, co-designing solutions and exploring new technologies. Sara Roberts, Head of Innovation explains that:
“Innovation isn’t just about the next digital solution. It’s about everyone involved having the confidence to ask new questions, developing our skills to test ideas and creating the environment that fosters collaboration across historical boundaries.”
Streamlining innovation processes
Process has been one of our biggest growth areas. Today, 80% of senior leaders understand how to act on an idea and bring it forward – a significant increase from our 2022 baseline. The priority now is to empower more colleagues across all bands with the same tools and clarity.
Building a culture that encourages and celebrates innovation
Encouragingly, more staff now feel supported to contribute ideas and learn from experimentation. Recognition of innovation is improving at directorate level, and we are working to make this a consistent, organisation-wide standard.
As one member of the senior leadership team stated:
“Your recent knowledge event has been one of the best things I have seen recently, it’s given me a new perspective on how I take this learning into working more effectively”.
Innovation with purpose
In our most recent assessment, 68% of staff agreed that our customers expect innovative solutions from Arden & GEM. This is not just a challenge – it’s a call to action. We are building an organisation where innovation is part of all of our work, not a separate function.
Innovation in health and care is about culture, systems and people working together differently to achieve better outcomes. We’re proud to share the progress we’ve made, and are excited to continue to innovate and transform our health and care system.
To learn more about how we developed a culture of innovation, email our Strategy, Innovation and Planning team.
We can also support other organisations and systems to build their own innovation culture and capabilities.
