Innovate and Assess: how to incorporate assessment in innovation

22 Feb
Dolors Benítez

Incorporating the culture of assessment in innovative initiatives was the starting point and the challenge from which the Observatory of Innovation in Healthcare Management in Catalonia (OIGS) initiated the first edition of the Innovate and Assess training workshop, a programme to train “Agents of Change” with the focus set on assessment and innovation.

What were the contents of this initiative?

  • What is innovation, what is assessment and what is the OIGS’s process of assessment?
  • The management of change to provide tools to encourage assessment
  • A practical session in assessment
  • The conceptualisation of a proposal to implement the assessment of an innovative initiative

From the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS) and via the Community for Innovation of the OIGS, a process of assessment has been driven allowing the quality of methodology in innovative practices to be measured within the framework of the public healthcare system of Catalonia, offering professionals in health and organisations the opportunity to opt for the certification of their experiences as an added stamp of quality.

This workshop has enabled experts in innovation to get in touch with experts in assessment and share their knowledge with each other in order to improve the quality of assessment of innovation.

This training activity has been accredited with 2,0 credits by the Catalan Council of Ongoing Training for Healthcare Professions.

The main aim has been to create and facilitate the necessary tools to be able to carry out assessment and innovation in healthcare centres in an adequate manner.

On the one hand, Cari Almazán, Cristina Colls, Núria Radó, Dolores Ruiz-Muñoz and Maite Solans, experts at the AQuAS in different disciplines participated, working with professionals and provided their knowledge and recommendations from the point of view of assessment.

On the other hand, Dani Bernard, Ignasi Clos, Xavi Olba and Clàudia Pardo of Induct, offered their expertise in the field of innovation using dynamics and techniques such as user journey map and cubbing.

Cubbing

With the intention of boosting the number of certified innovative initiatives (as we mentioned, using criteria to measure the quality of methodology), as well as spreading the word about the Observatory as a support tool in the assessment of the Catalan healthcare system as a whole, the AQuAS provides assistance, or mentoring, to all those professionals that provide self-evaluations of their own experiences but who do not attain the required quality of methodology to obtain certification.

At present, the OIGS has become a point of reference within the Catalan healthcare system, and day after day it places value on the effort made by organisations that share and divulge their innovative experiences and who promote the assessment of innovation.

Post written by Dolors Benítez.

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