Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the progress made by Sir David Nicholson in encouraging a culture change towards innovation within the NHS. [163958]

Dr Poulter, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health: NHS England has put a number of measures in place to ensure that the national health service moves towards a culture change regarding innovation.

The 2013 NHS Mandate sets out the objective of NHS England's Board to ensure that the new commissioning system promotes and supports the participation of the NHS in innovation and research.

In 2012 the NHS identified 108 innovations as having high impact potential. Many of these innovations now feature in requirements for trusts to focus on as part of their Commissioning for Quality and Innovation incentives for 2014-15.

The NHS is also increasing transparency of uptake of National Institute for Care Excellence technology appraisals through publication of a new innovation scorecard. The new scorecard provides patients and the public with information on the treatments available within their local hospitals and NHS services.

The Specialised Services Commissioning Innovation Fund will be launched in summer 2013, inviting organisations and industry partners to bid for funding to identify innovations with the potential to deliver high impact change (based on patient outcomes and cost/efficiency savings) within specialised services and then funding evaluation projects within the NHS that will assess whether the full potential can be realised.

NHS England is also collaborating with the Centre for Integrating Medicine and Innovative Technologies (CIMIT) in Boston with a view to adopting their innovation platform CIMIT Co-LAB as the primary web portal for sharing ideas and innovations across England.

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