It is a challenge that procurement, innovation and clinical colleagues at national, regional and trust level are all working to address alongside suppliers. Ruth McColl, Hanna Chipchase and Mandy Emery represented the Hub at the Procuring Innovation in the NHS event, organised by NHS InSites and Health Innovation East, and hosted at AstraZeneca’s Cambridge site.
Ruth gave a short presentation on the basics of NHS procurement, walking suppliers and innovators through the routes available to them and what they need to consider when looking to work with the NHS. As she put it herself, “while there is lots of work being done to try and encourage the procurement of innovation, I think it’s still safe to say the procurement rules don’t lend themselves to this being an easy process.” The event itself was part of that work, giving procurement, innovation teams and suppliers a shared space to be honest about what’s working and what isn’t.
Hanna described the atmosphere as collaborative from the start, with a genuinely useful mix of procurement, innovator and buyer perspectives in the room alongside colleagues from Health Innovation East and NHS InSites. Mandy came away struck by how much good innovation is still sitting outside the door of public procurement simply because small suppliers don’t have the financial track record that traditional processes expect – not because the ideas themselves aren’t strong.
That theme – strong ideas, unclear routes – ran through the whole day. As Ruth noted, “there is a misconception of the role of procurement from supplier and NHS colleagues”, and part of the answer is getting procurement involved earlier, not later. Hanna heard the same pattern come up again and again in discussion: suppliers building strong relationships with clinical or technical teams, running a successful pilot, and only then discovering that a pilot doesn’t automatically lead to a contract, and that the procurement process effectively has to start from scratch.
Ruth’s take on this was clear: “the barriers for innovators and start-ups are often high”, and traditional procurement isn’t always set up to evaluate suppliers who don’t meet certain minimum criteria, like previous contracts delivered or financial standing. That doesn’t mean these suppliers aren’t capable – it means the sector needs better ways of working with them, and better mechanisms for carrying a good pilot through to something lasting. Ruth summed up the opportunity succinctly: rather than treating pilots and contracts as two separate hurdles, there’s real value in “looking at how these could be built into procurement processes to support transition to full scale contracts and avoid duplication of effort for SMEs.”
This is exactly where routes like frameworks and dynamic markets already have a part to play, giving suppliers a structured way in and giving trusts a compliant, faster path to the innovation they want to adopt. Attendees split into groups to identify and rate the challenges they’d experienced, before tables were mixed so everyone could hear different perspectives on the same issues. As Hanna put it, the day wasn’t about solving everything there and then – it was about starting an honest conversation that needs to keep going.
The day itself wasn’t without a logistical curveball – train problems on the way in meant the event had to pivot into a hybrid format at short notice, with some attendees dialing in from home or the office instead. The organisers handled the switch quickly and gracefully, without allowing it to dampen the energy in the room.
There was a genuine sense that everyone in the room – procurement, innovation teams and suppliers alike – wants to find a better way of working together, and that the conversation is only just getting started.
If your organisation is navigating the same challenge, whether that’s finding a compliant route to bring in innovative suppliers or working out how a pilot could translate into a full contract, our team would be glad to talk it through. Get in touch at: [email protected]
Contributors: Ruth McColl, Hanna Chipchase and Mandy Emery