Introducing Innovation in to Health Care: how to generate a sustainable service

Ms Jenni Livingston, Senior Lecturer
Centre for Health Program Evaluation
School of Population Health
The University of Melbourne

All too often, innovations that are both soundly evidence based and successful in small pilots
founder when rolled out on a large scale. Providing health care managers and other
stakeholders with ways to make their intervention work well and be sustainable requires much
more than throwing money at the problem or writing good policy.

This workshop will look at the characteristics of successful innovations to find out what makes
them work and be sustainable. We will examine the reasons why the program, its providers,
the context in which it operates and the nature of the program users work together to build
success and sustainability. Different ways of looking at the sustainability of innovations will be
provided.

Cases of successful innovation in a variety of health care situations will be explored and the
critical attributes that make them work examined. One example is a checklist developed to
examine the feasibility of piloting an innovation in Victorian hospitals.

As well, some of the more commonly encountered problems in setting up innovations will be
described. Workshop participants will be invited to examine workplace based examples to
suggest appropriate ways in which programs might be made more effective and sustainable.
Ways in which barriers to success and sustainability of innovations might be reduced will also
be explored.