11th September 2025
The Horizon Scanning, Demand Signalling, Innovation and Business Development (HSDS IBD) team sits within the Transformation Directorate at NHS England (NHSE). The team provides expertise and support to clinical policy teams within NHSE. By identifying research and innovation opportunities across national clinical and strategic priorities, they help to accelerate the utilisation and adoption of research and innovation into the NHS.
The Challenge
NHSE commissioned the NHS Transformation Unit to support the newly formed HSDS IBD team to help develop their service offer, build resilience, support capacity and establish sustainable ways of working.
Our Approach
The commission required us to mobilise a team with diverse skills to work collaboratively with the client team across four workstreams (Clinical Engagement, Programme Management Office (PMO), Horizon Scanning/Demand Signalling and Market Intelligence (MI) reporting. Alongside providing capacity to support key activities of the HSDS IBD team, we applied our improvement expertise to test processes and develop a suite of tools to enhance team resilience and reduce variation in standard outputs.
The Outcome
Clinical Engagement – We developed a comprehensive Clinical Engagement Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). This outlined the full process from managing and prioritising clinical areas in the pipeline, engagement with National Clinical Directors and follow-on work. Additionally, we produced a ‘Who We Are’ brochure to market the team’s work.
Programme Management Office (PMO) – We provided day to day operational support, skills and experience based on TU’s Project, Programme and Change Management offer, as well as developing a suite of tools to provide rigour and consistency in the team’s approach to managing projects and programmes of work and their associated activities. This included:
- A custom-built Service Tracker, to record ongoing conversations with clinical and project leads and progress.
- Programme and Project level management toolkits.
- A custom-made Gantt chart to track individual projects, their progress against milestones, risks and interdependencies.
Horizon Scanning/Demand Signalling – We provided relationship management between NHSE and the National Institute for Health and Care Research Innovation Observatory (NIHRIO). This included upskilling NIHRIO in their project management, working with the team to build Quality Assurance processes and developing a step-by-step guide for the Research Innovation Needs Assessment approach.
Market intelligence reports (MI) – We researched and created multiple MI reports, outlining available technological solutions for a range of clinical specialties, including medical devices and emerging digital solutions. We used Quality Improvement methodology to improve the process and developed a detailed guide and range of templates on how to produce a report.
Legacy and Impact
Over the course of our commission and development of over 25 deliverables, we provided support across the whole spectrum of work within the remit of the HSDS IBD team, helping to build resilience in a relatively new team and set them up for future success. In addition to the individual deliverables outlined above, we pulled everything together into an overarching Toolkit, giving the team easy access to all of the tools and processes we developed.
Our client highlighted the TU Team ‘got up to speed quickly and integrated well with the [HSDS IBD] team delivering good outputs’. Specifically in relation to the Service Tracker tool Helen Bauckham – Horizon Scanning and Demand Signalling Senior Manager shared ‘your instructions [for the Service Tracker] were so clear and helpful, and the way you have set everything up makes everything so straightforward to make edits! It’s just beautiful having all the automation for the summary graphs and the summary table – a real treat’