Wayne Elliott is associate director of commercial enterprise at The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Looking back over the three years since the team was formed, he reflects on the difference the team is making for patients.
The commercial enterprise team came together in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and since then we have worked to establish and grow the team, with a diverse portfolio covering projects in diagnostics, innovation, research, education, training and pharmacy.
Our team has a variety of expertise, skills and knowledge gained from NHS and commercial backgrounds, which means we can offer a wide range of support for colleagues and partners in our own organisation, regionally and nationally.
We are here to support with taking a business or commercial approach to developing new or different ideas, which could be for a product or service or simply an improvement that could benefit patients or staff.
We help with pricing strategy, business planning, marketing and communications for commercially viable ideas and developments. For other projects, it may be that the income-generating opportunities are less but we can offer insight and support from different perspectives for the innovation and business planning side of things.
Any money we help bring into the organisation through commercial activity is reinvested into NHS services, to ensure we continue to deliver the best possible health care. To date we have contributed £7million towards NHS services.
We have a wealth of assets in Newcastle Hospitals, including world class facilities and exceptional clinical, research and operational expertise, plus innovative and driven colleagues with fantastic ideas for improvement and innovation. One of the team’s current priorities is to ensure we have a strong strategy in place for growing the trusts commercial income, building and developing relationships across the organisation, wider NHS landscape and industry.
This isn’t something we can do working in a silo, nor would we want to, as success is dependent on involvement and collaboration with colleagues across the trust, both in terms of supporting the schemes we are working on and identifying new opportunities.
Our commercial strategy group facilitates free flowing discussion and challenge around shaping the pillars of our work and how we are impacting patient care. The group enables us to engage on our strategy development with colleagues and we are looking at increasing representation from teams and departments across the organisation’s 18,000 staff.
Two of our biggest projects so far have been to support two of our ‘spin out’ labs – Novopath and the North East Innovation Lab – in commercialising their diagnostic services, helping them to grow, achieve and maintain financial sustainability, and explore new markets.
It’s been really rewarding to be involved in Novopath’s work with AMLo Biosciences, which is helping to create a new test for early-stage melanoma skin cancer.
Another exciting project has been our work with the trust’s new clinical skills academy which will train thousands of staff. We helped to develop the business plan, supporting with commercial forecasting and pricing, with a view to developing the commercial side of the offer.
We’re also delighted to have extended our role for another year as an ‘InSite test bed’ – one of only ten across the country – for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, which involves testing and evaluating the latest innovative solutions that can improve the quality of care we provide for our patients and support our workforce.
Innovation belongs to everyone at the trust and support for harnessing and developing innovation sits within our team – we can help colleagues to develop their bright ideas, turn them into a reality, and roll them out.
We can enable teams to realise the potential of ‘just an idea’ and it’s rewarding being able to unblock perceived barriers or identify solutions from within or outside the NHS.
It’s our goal to maximise commercial revenue and I’m passionate about guiding strategic decisions with information and insight.
I spent 19 years learning my skills at Greggs, covering project management and operational delivery, before moving to work in the product development team and then in commercial planning and forecasting.
I’m now focussing those transferable skills on developing and delivering our commercial objectives, supporting service improvement and helping Newcastle Hospitals to continue to deliver high quality care.
I love the job and working in the NHS. It can be complex, but the reward is knowing that you are helping patients.
That’s what we keep in sight as we create our commercial strategy. People are at the heart of what we do, and we want to maximise the commercial opportunities we create to make a difference to patients and their health.
