Building on Trust: Accelerating university-hospital collaborative innovation processes during COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly placed extreme pressure on national healthcare systems. In response, hospitals needed immediate access to additional specific capabilities to address multiple emerging challenges. Collaborations between regional hospitals and their local universities offered one potential source of such capabilities. However, there are typically multiple barriers to the rapid setup of such collaborations. Despite this, examples were reported of successful collaborations between hospitals and universities that contributed directly to addressing COVID-related challenges. This paper explores evidence captured from one COVID-triggered collaboration to understand how the barriers to collaboration were overcome. The case we analysed was initiated in March 2020 in the UK between a large regional teaching hospital and a local university’s manufacturing engineering department. Our exploratory research reveals four factors that seem to have played a role in overcoming the anticipated barriers to collaboration: (i) organisational legitimisation as a heuristic for enabling the initiation and rapid implementation of the collaboration; (ii) availability of slack resources to rapidly deliver value-adding project outcomes; (iii) roles and capabilities of boundary-spanning individuals; and (iv) compatibility of institutional logics. Three areas of further work are currently underway. Firstly, we are undertaking interviews with a wider range of stakeholders and conducting more detailed analysis of evidence relating to the early stages of this collaboration. Secondly, we are comparing the evidence captured from this case with other collaborations established during the same period between university engineering departments and their local hospitals. Thirdly, following the successful completion of three initial projects during the first COVID-19 surge, 62 projects (ranging from immediate needs to long-term planning; from individual product development to hospital re-design) have been identified and initiated. Evidence from this widening and deepening of the collaboration is being captured to provide a valuable longitudinal dataset to help develop understanding of long-term partnership evolution.