Crafting a compelling NHS pitch deck to unlock doors - 2024
Generating Interest
How do you get the attention of super-busy NHS customers to generate interest in your innovation? It requires more than promoting the benefits of your technology or medical device but instead you need to create a compelling narrative and a well-crafted pitch that helps to forge your commercial partnership with the NHS to reimagine patient care, efficiency, and outcomes.
Your content should do more than just inform; it should captivate their attention and hold it, invigorates curiosity, and ignites their desire to find out more. Creating a pitch deck should articulate clearly both what your innovation does but specifically how it solves the problems and priorities within the NHS.
Should you find yourself in the fortunate position of promoting your innovation to a potential NHS provider, public health, or Integrated Care Board commissioner, it is important to demonstrate value and impact. But most importantly you should instil the confidence in your pitch that you have researched and understood their local problems and priorities; specifically, their current clinical or operational practices or pathways to show how your innovation can improve healthcare.
Researching NHS priorities
Knowledge is power within healthcare innovation. To produce a compelling story, it is crucial to show your understanding of the national drivers for healthcare transformation, particularly amidst the post-COVID era. The regional and national focus has shifted towards the recovery of clinical services, notably reducing elective care waiting times and alleviating pressure on primary care.
Researching and understanding the UK’s evolving political context for these digital transformation drivers will help both within your content but aligning the value of your innovation to the changing policy decisions, assisting with reducing the significant waiting times, efficiency targets and clinical workforce challenges.
Key information sources are national and sector-specific publications, and all strategies and plans published by the national bodies (Eg. Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England / Scotland / Wales, or Northern Ireland). These could include elective care recovery plans, annual operational planning guidance, updates to NHS payment scheme, Women’s Health Strategy and Long Term Plan etc. You could identify and understand which national plans and strategies are relevant as they will be discussed and debated within the healthcare innovation sector (note – LinkedIn posts are a good source of information).
To gain the attention of regional NHS stakeholders, research the region’s specific challenges and their strategic objectives. These annual objectives or targets could be financial, reducing health inequalities or addressing their clinical workforce challenges – most are similar but demonstrating your understanding could make you stand out from your competitors.
Look at local strategies or board papers for their Integrated Care Board or local authorities to align how your innovation could help solve their challenges. Joint Strategic Needs Assessments undertaken by public health teams should have key statistics particularly determinants of ill-health and health inequalities and use this data to match against the benefits of your innovation. For example, if there is a high percentage of the population are from South Asian ethnic groups with a higher prevalence of Type 2 diabetes then a weight management digital platform would benefit specifically these populations.
Problem statement
Clearly outline the problem that your innovation addresses and explain why a different approach is required.
This problem could be elective care waiting times, increasing demand for mental health services, increased waiting times for GP appointments, longer length of stays, or inefficiency in referral management – to name a few. Don’t generalise when explaining the problem, for example the statement that ‘1 in 4 people experience mental illness ’ is too vague. If you innovation support specific cohorts of patients and pathways you need to be specific with prevalence of the specific mental illness. For example, number of people in the UK suffering from anxiety and the key factor (s) causing this prevalence. Define and detail the problem that your innovation addresses e.g. ‘increasing demand upon musculoskeletal services due to more people suffering from lower back pain’.
Existing practices and processes
In the clinical or operational landscape that your innovation operates within, it is important to research and understand thoroughly the current or standard pathway, access threshold, and practices. This could be within the diagnosis, treatment, clinical outcomes, or workflow, so that you are able to articulate the existing problems. Understanding and outlining the current landscape, structure and funding flows will help to outline how your innovation can enable improvements and efficiencies.
Identifying population size impacted
If your innovation is improving clinical care, identify the size of the cohort affected by that clinical condition compared to the rest of the population. This could be at UK or regional level (i.e. ICB population size) and don’t generalise. For example, if your innovation only supports those with treatment resistant depression don’t provide data for the entire population affected by mental illness. Instead give the data of those diagnosed with severe and treatment resistant depression.
Use recent data or research to validate your problem statement from regional and national data sources, research, or national policy documents. Useful data sources can be found through NHS England, Department of Health & Social Care, and most importantly NHS Digital regularly publishes data from national datasets to give more detail.
Articulating your innovation
In the past, of the hundreds of healthcare innovation pitches I’ve seen, the majority didn’t explain what their innovation did. It didn’t matter whether it was a digital or technology solution, medical device or point of care testing; I was left trying to work out what its benefits were. Describe your innovation concisely and in plain English without too much jargon or hyperbole. Basically, explain how it helps reduce or solve the problem.
Get the balance right between too much or too little information on your innovation, a rule of thumb is 2 or 3 slides to explain how it works. Some people understand information better when it is presented visually; use a flow chart or something similar to show how your innovation could be used within a service or clinical pathway.
Use plain English and visual images to bring it life e.g. screenshots of your technology. Avoid too much technical terminology if you are not sure of the reader’s level of knowledge; for example, referring to an ‘API’ to describe your interoperability with Electronic Patient Records don’t assume they will know what an ‘API’ is (integration might be a better word).
Use Cases
Don’t expect the reader to work out how your innovation contributes towards solving the problem identified. Give a few options on how your innovation can be used. Specify where else your innovation is being used within the NHS and for what purpose. Provide some of the details on the way it is being used within a service or clinical pathway. Not only will that assure other NHS providers or commissioners that your innovation is being used safely elsewhere but may give examples of how it could be integrated into their services.
These examples can be particularly useful if there is a concern that your innovation is too disruptive within a pathway, practice or process and would therefore require substantial resource from the NHS organisation whether that is project management or change management resources. By providing different implementation options you could reduce their concern and accelerate their interest in adoption.
Evidence of impact
Give an overview of the evidence and research associated with your innovation to demonstrate the clinical efficacy and effectiveness compared to standard practice. Use NICE evidence standards framework for digital health technologies to guide the level of evidence required outlines the expected standards for digital health technologies and benefits to the health and care system. Detail any user research that you’ve undertaken, including accessibility testing with end users whether that is patients or clinicians.
Return on Investment (ROI)
To show the expected resource impact of your innovation compared to current care pathway or system process by providing a budget impact analysis or sometimes called a ‘cost-benefit analysis’. The NICE evidence standards framework for digital health technologies also gives guidance on undertaking a budget impact analysis to their required standards. This will ascertain if the benefits outweigh the costs. Ideally, you should have independent evaluation of the cost benefits using results from previous clinical trials, real word evaluations or other data sources to demonstrate the effectiveness of your innovation. However, estimates can give an initial idea for the NHS stakeholder of the ROI, and I’ve had several NHS business cases for digital technology approved using estimated ROI calculations.
Start with the eligible population e.g. those with type 2 diabetes in UK region. Followed by calculating the direct and indirect resource impact comparing to current practice. This could be reducing hospital admissions, length of stay or operational efficiency e.g. releasing clinician’s time or reducing prescription costs.
If your innovation will make savings within acute care in the NHS, the NHS Payment scheme's prices workbook provides useful unit prices to calculate savings. Lastly, calculate the cost of your innovation for that identified population and subtracting the savings to identify the potential return on investment (ROI). But don’t overestimate the potential savings; be realistic in the impact of your innovation and explore uncertainty to provide trustworthy estimates to those interested in your innovation.
Pricing
Where or not to include the price of your innovation depends upon your commercial strategy. If you are uncomfortable disclosing your unit or licence price, then detail the pricing or business model (E.g. licence fee per individual, per GP practice / hospital or against population size). This information may be sufficient to gather interest prior to being commissioned or procured. Also, be transparent about any ‘one off’ costs e.g. implementation costs or additional functionality costs to avoid surprises!
Remember your information isn't just about delivering facts; it's about weaving a narrative that keeps them engaged within the first page and makes them want to hear more!
If you need help to write and produce your value proposition, investment pitch or advice on gathering evidence, case studies or other research – get in touch with me to explore further: lesley.soden@succoris.com
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any NHS organisation or entity.