Structuring Collaboration Between Researchers and Operational Innovators: Diffusing New Practices Across the Veteran's Administration Healthcare System.

Introduction: To support a learning health system, we aimed to develop processes and tools to enable collaboration between the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) operations and research sectors in the implementation of promising healthcare innovations. Methods: The collaboration process involved: (1) holding foundational partnership meetings between operations and health research sector leadership (2) reviewing existing research-operations collaborations frameworks, (3) developing a framework with criteria for systematically categorizing innovations into defined pathways that integrate research and operational considerations, and (4) adapting known participatory approaches to collect information for productive collaboration. Clearly delineating the skills, goals, and perspectives of the innovation and research sectors during partnership meetings enabled assessment of the value and trade-offs of advancing an innovation into practice. The literature review of existing frameworks yielded heterogeneous objectives, domains, and criteria for evaluation. Across framework domains, commonalities (e.g., alignment with institutional goals), differences (e.g., attention to sustainment), and gaps (e.g., health equity focus) were noted. We developed five research-innovation partnership pathways and criteria to vet and categorize potential innovations (i.e., evidence for effectiveness and implementation, risks, equity, feasibility, and sustainability). We developed a menu of participatory processes to elicit feedback on innovations. Results: We applied this process with an innovation to refine and evaluate the process, pathways, and criteria. Surveys of diverse partners (clinicians, administrators, researchers) ranked the innovation using our developed criteria, and placed the innovation on a pathway, which then helped guide next steps for evaluating the innovations. Overall, the process was feasible. We were able to categorize and plan next steps for promising innovations. Conclusion: This theoretically grounded, iterative process may serve as a blueprint to accelerate the implementation of healthcare innovations. Through these intentional and participatory processes to engage operations innovators and health services researchers we can speed the delivery of promising innovations that impact patient care.