Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 6 November 2025 to Question 83750 on Health Services: Innovation, what mechanisms are in place to monitor and evaluate the successful adoption and diffusion of health innovations across the NHS; which bodies are responsible for measuring this impact at (a) national and (b) regional levels; and how these findings inform future commissioning and policy decisions.

No organisations hold a statutory responsibility specifically to monitor or evaluate the rates of the successful adoption and spread of health innovation in the National Health Service. However, the NHS Business Services Authority, on behalf of the Office for Life Sciences, publishes the Innovation Scorecard every six months. This is of significant use to the NHS and has been published since January 2013.

The Innovation Scorecard reports on the use of medicines and medicine groupings in the NHS in England, which have been positively appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). It reveals what NICE-recommended treatments are available at a local level within trusts and integrated care boards, as well as at national and NHS England region levels. Data limitations mean it cannot be used for performance management, but it does allow the NHS to identify variation, which, through discussion, can be explained, challenged, or acted upon.

Several organisations organise additional detailed evaluations for specific groups of health innovations. For example, the Health Innovation Network (HIN) oversees numerous national programmes which monitor the uptake and spread of selected health innovations. This helps them, and NHS England, determine how best to improve the uptake of these innovations.

Regionally, HINs also undertake monitoring and evaluation for selected innovations that they support. Integrated care boards and providers may also choose to conduct their own evaluations, using local data to understand whether innovations deliver expected improvements in outcomes or efficiency.