The Innovation Exchange is a place to share and promote healthcare innovation and improvement projects, large and small, across NSW. It highlights projects that can be adapted to suit local health challenges in other parts of the state.
By sharing this knowledge, we encourage healthcare professionals to learn from the experiences of others, empowering them to make improvements and foster innovation in their own workplaces.
The Innovation Exchange recognises the commitment and expertise of staff working in the NSW health system and connects health professionals who share similar clinical interests.
Please note that we are not currently taking submissions from the commercial sector.
Why share your project?
If you have designed or implemented a project that aims to improve healthcare in NSW, the Innovation Exchange is the ideal platform to share your work with a wider audience and highlight the efforts of you and your team.
You will have a page on the Innovation Exchange to feature your project so other health professionals can see what you have achieved and work out if it will help them to solve a similar challenge in their organisation or facility.
You don’t need to have a completed project to have it published on the Innovation Exchange; we also accept projects that are in the planning or implementation stages.
Eligibility criteria
Once you submit your project to the Innovation Exchange, we will assess it against three criteria:
- The project identifies and addresses a recognised and unmet need
- The project falls into one of these three categories:
- a new resource including a model of care, clinical pathway, program, tool or initiative
- a new procedure or process including a policy, training program, strategy or communication tool
- an improvement to an existing service or the development of a new one.
- The project is current and has been developed in the last 12–18 months or is presently implemented.
If your project does not meet the eligibility criteria, a staff member will reach out to discuss the reasons that the project submission was unsuccessful.
Completing your project summary
Project submissions must include a completed project summary. The project summary needs to capture all necessary information required to provide a complete outline of your project.
Download the project summary template
Writing tips
It’s important to keep the reader in mind as you develop your Innovation Exchange project summary. It will be available online for anyone to read, which means readers may not have any prior knowledge of your project or health care setting.
When crafting your summary, we ask that you do so clearly and concisely, using plain language. For example:
- Illustrate = show, draw
- Accomplish = do, achieve
- Indicate = show, point out
- Utilise = use
- Participate = take part in
- Demonstrate = show
- Discontinue = stop, end
Make sure your sentences are concise by deleting unnecessary words. Do not use any unnecessary medical jargon, technical terms or acronyms. If you need to use them, spell out all words in full and explain what they mean if necessary.
If you are providing graphs or charts to support your results, make sure they are clearly labelled so people understand exactly what they mean. Write in a professional, objective tone in the third person. For example, ‘the organisation’ rather than ‘I’ or ‘we’.
The submission approval process
This flow chart shows the contribution process from project submission to final publication. Our content approval process is designed to ensure the information featured on the Innovation Exchange has been given the appropriate sign off.
How to submit your project
When your project summary is complete, please fill in the submission form on the IE website. Remember to attach your project summary.
Sensitivities for publishing
The Innovation Exchange is a public website, which means it’s available for anyone to read. For this reason, you will need to be careful when including sensitive information or outcomes. Consider if the content you are writing will impact your organisations’ reputation or generate negative media attention. If you’re not sure, contact us or your local communications team for clarification.
Intellectual property and copyright
All content created by the NSW Government, including its employees and agencies, is owned by the Crown for 50 years after publication. While the author may not own the copyright, creators usually have moral rights to the work and should be attributed, such as a healthcare service or input from clinicians or consumers.
Be careful using information from a third party. Just because content is available to the public, doesn’t mean you have approval to use it. A work is only considered to be freely available without permission if the copyright has expired.
You don’t need permission to use content owned by the Australian Government if you work for a government organisation, but it’s a good idea to ask as a courtesy. The exception to this is the use of logos, which you will need permission to use.
Here are some tips that may be helpful when writing your project summary:
- use your own text and images wherever possible and ask permission to publish anything that is not yours
- check with your local communications team when you require images, as they will likely have high quality images that have already been approved
- refer to the NSW Health Privacy Manual for Health Information if your project involves sharing patient information, commercial in confidence information or surveys where participants may be identifiable when using images, make sure you have documented permission from anyone identifiable in your photos.
Publication and beyond
You are welcome to update your project at any time.
If you published your project before the final evaluation was complete, it is important to update your project with the latest solutions and results, so readers know you’ve achieved your aim.
To make any changes to your project, simply email the Innovation Exchange team at ACI-IE@health.nsw.gov.au with the required changes.