Scaling up service innovations in health care: solving the problem?

There is an on-going discussion and attempts to improve health care services. We studied the implementation of retail clinics in Finland which can be described as a service innovation attempting to change the system to answer the needs of citizens. The problem is that service innovations have a tendency to stay local. For this, we identified factors needed in service innovation to promote the scaling up process. The results were that the innovation should: 1. Have clear and justified need from the public authorities, health care professionals and citizens 2. Be tested and piloted in local conditions 3. Have scientifically evidence of its impacts 4. Be conceptualised to make it easy to understand and customise to local needs. We argue that management of systems is needed where scaling up is placed in central role and incentives for the municipalities to scale up their service innovation are created.