How to create a development route

Onderzoeker Moerland

Plan your development

To improve care for patients with cancer, innovation with proven benefits should be implemented in daily practice on large scale. However, innovations do not automatically find their way to practice.

The path from an idea to an innovation in daily practice consists of several steps, with different stakeholders and influencing factors (risks and opportunities). This makes every development path unique and complex. Early insight into this route, stakeholders and other influencing factors will increase the chance of successful implementation.

 

Picture of different research phases

 

Tips on how to create your development route

  • Know your endpoint
    What are you developing? Who will use your innovation? Which patient group(s)? For example; a diagnostic test to stratify patients with cancer type X for treatment Y, or a tool/method to support patients with problem X, or a novel/improved therapy for cancer type X.  

    Define your endpoint, keep it in mind and work towards.

  • Create the path towards your endpoint
    What is your current research phase? Which questions will you need to answer in this phase? And which in the next phases? Consider the following research phases (see image above, and our information on funding in our Programme Research & Implementation)
    / Basic research
    / Credentialing
    / Creation of modality
    / Preclinical research
    / Clinical trials
    / Implementation (research)

    Know your current position and the road ahead
  • Which risks and opportunities play a role in your development path?
    Think of the following categories:
    / Applicability in clinical practice
    / IP and potential commercialization
    / Legislation; Laws & Regulations
    / Reimbursement by health insurers or other parties
    / Stakeholders
    / Organisation structure and culture

         Look forward: on which next steps do you need to anticipate?

  • Responsibility

    Will you (and your team) be performing the next step, after the current project has finished successfully?
    If yes, do you have the expertise to do so, or which actions are needed to acquire this?
    If not, who will be the envisioned party to follow up on the results? Are you already in contact with a (potential) party with the expertise and enthusiasm to follow up on your results?

    Who's going to execute the next step? If it's not you, then who?