Beneficiary contact and innovation: The relation between contact with patients and medical innovation under different institutional logics

Hospitals and innovation: Introduction to the special section

“…Our results question the idea, central in the translational model, that a more intensive application of basic science to innovation is needed to spur innovation, and that clinical researchers should partner with basic research." These findings are largely supported but also nuanced in the study by Llopis and D'Este (2016) where they relate participation in innovation activities to contact with patients in different research settings denoted as different "institutional logics". Their main finding is an inverted U-shaped relationship between innovation activities and contact with patients regardless of whether the wider research setting or logic is basic science or clinic/care.…”

“…For translational research to accomplish research-based innovation and become more than organisational conflicts and "the linear model in disguise", it seems that wider institutional and organisational changes may be required and a lot of patience for this to work. At the individual level maybe even new types of hybrid competences are required, which some of our articles indicate can be found in hospitals and elsewhere, albeit probably not very commonly (Llopis and D'Este, 2016;Ali and Gittelman, 2016;Lander, 2016). Fundamentally, all the articles in the special section agree that collaboration between research units and clinical sites is valuable, but most argue that the collaboration should start to a much greater extent with the problems and needs of the clinic rather than the perceived commercial potential of specific research results.…”

“…The seven final articles represent different levels of analysis of hospitals and innovation. Three of them analyse micro-level processes of R&D and innovation focusing on the activities of individuals within hospitals: Ali and Gittelman (2016) look at patenting and licensing among personnel in two prominent U.S. academic medical centres over a 30-year period, Llopis and D'Este (2016) have conducted a survey among individuals in Spanish biomedical research networks to study participation in different forms of medical innovation, and Lander (2016) explores translational activities among healthcare professionals and researchers in a Canadian academic hospital setting. Two articles represent the organisational level.…”

“…At the level of the individual researcher we have seen that research-based medical innovation seems to benefit strongly from hospital involvement in terms of contact with patients and healthcare workers (Llopis and D'Este, 2016;Ali and Gittelman, 2016), although there may be decreasing returns to this effect (Llopis and D'Este, 2016) and several barriers when it comes to including clinicians in research projects (Lander, 2016). Such barriers are also seen at the organisational level where there are many challenges in combining commercially oriented goals of innovation with healthcare goals, despite some optimism among different types of personnel in hospitals and policy makers (Miller and French, 2016).…”

“…These paradigms do not simply denote different objects and methods of research (bench versus bedside) but more fundamental learning strategies, belief systems and institutional arrangements (Gittelman, 2016). The articles have discussed the paradigms of clinical research versus basic biomedical research (Lander, 2016;Ali and Gittelman, 2016), "care" versus "science" (Llopis and D'Este, 2016) and "innovation for healthcare benefits" versus "innovation for commercial benefits" (Miller and French, 2016). To some extent these clashes are internal to research hospitals because these large and complex organisations are engaged in many different forms of research and innovationoriented activities.…”