The National Health Service (NHS) is the world's largest single healthcare delivery system. While research that takes place within the NHS is world leading, in clinical practice, it can feel slow, bureaucratic and difficult to enact change or embrace new innovations.1 To keep up with the evolving challenges that continue to face the NHS, we believe adopting the principles of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Pirate Innovation is required to ensure healthcare is adaptable, dynamic and resilient. Traditional, insular and hierarchical business models are a barrier to innovation in many large organisations. An example of this was in the 1980s, when a group of young NASA engineers were surprised to find the mission control computer systems in operation were outdated and unlikely to effectively support the increasing demands and complexity of upcoming space programmes.2 3 The team's ideas were met with strong internal resistance. Cost, regulations and a 'tried and tested' incumbent system were cited as reasons against the endeavour. Dubbing themselves 'Pirates', this young engineering team took it on themselves to develop a new shuttle mission control system using borrowed off-the-shelf hardware and tailor-made code that not only offered higher visualisation, analytical and diagnostic capabilities to the agency but also was cheaper to operate than the previous system. The Pirates' open innovation practices transformed NASA's approach to problem-solving and technology development, resulting in improved exploration capabilities and efficiencies when executing projects. Based on their success, NASA requested the Pirates develop the international space station mission control and have since embraced open innovation processes. The NASA Pirates codified the 'Pirate Paradigm': a set of values and principles that challenged the established culture to achieve results while maintaining personal responsibility.3 These include:

We need more NHS Pirates

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Journal Info

Category	Quartile
HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES	3