The NHS in England has had repeated programmes and supporting initiatives to stimulate adoption of innovation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the NHS finds doing so particularly challenging, for example its slow progress in making use of basic communications technologies.

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Policy-makers express their frustration by commissioning a new report every couple of years decrying the slow pace of change and highlighting the potential benefits of faster adoption of innovation. For advocates of directive leadership, the answer is for the national NHS bodies to play a more active role in mandating adoption of ‘proven’ good practice, with sanctions for those who fail to do so. For supporters of free markets, the solution is to break down monopolies, support entrants, allow inefficient providers to exit the market and unleash the creative destruction of competition, although doing so in the NHS has proved difficult in practice.

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This article aims to make a pragmatic contribution to the discussion of how to speed up the adoption of service innovation in the NHS. It draws on eight examples of successful spread of innovation supported by academic health science networks (organisations set up by NHS England in 2013 to identify and spread health innovations, including through connecting the NHS with academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry).