Blog – Closing the Gap Between Research and Implementation

There is a frustration that hits during a PhD or postdoc and it’s the gap between discovery and implementation. Your work is done, and you might have designed a better way to deliver dementia care. A small change in practice. A tool to help communication. A tweak to routine that makes life easier for staff and people with dementia alike.

The evidence looks good. Feedback is strong. People even say they want to use it. You write 60,000 words on the issue in your thesis, you publish papers, attend conferences to talk about it. Then everything stops, the job ended, the funding ended, and then… what?

This is where translation tends to fall apart. Not because the research is bad. Not because the need isn’t real. But because systems are rarely set up to notice or adopt new ideas, especially when they come from early career researchers. And especially when they arrive without infrastructure, funding, or institutional memory to carry them forward, and when the person who made the discovery isn’t funded and has moved on.

Sometimes it’s about ownership. People might like what you’ve created, but if they were not part of the process, they may not see it as theirs. Research can feel distant from practice, even when it was designed for it.

Sometimes it’s just the weight of everyday reality. Health and care services are already stretched. They do not have time to read all the latest research to find new ways or working. They don’t have time to test a new process or make changes that do not immediately solve the problems they are measured against. They are tired. So are you.

And still, people try. Some build in implementation from the start. If you’re lucky you can run your research inside the service, not alongside it. They invite the users of the idea to help shape it. The result is less clean, but more real. It also means that at least one place will make use of the discovery.

Others look outside the formal routes. They share their findings with third sector partners, go to organisations like Innovate UK or Alzheimer’s Society for Innovation Funding. They build toolkits. They teach. They translate their own research into formats that are less academic and more practical, in the hope that something will stick. However, this is generally difficult when you also need to have a job, and if you’re a researcher your next project may be completely different.

Then there are those studies and discoveries that turn into zombies not dead but not being used. And if you led that study, it can feel quietly devastating. The only way you can keep the dream alive is by rehashing the work, thinking of a new angle, a new add-on study anything to keep it alive, because the only way to keep it going it through research funding – yet deep down, you know that what you already have is enough, and it just needs implementing and funding, not further ‘research’.

Often.. qualitative and clinical researchers seem to get stuck in that strange space between discovery and delivery, wondering whether it was worth it! Well, you are not alone, some of our bloggers, particularly Dr Anna Volkmer have talked about this, and its only through their passion for the topic that things didn’t come to an end, they end up leading the service and the research.

At the end of the day, the work matters. Even if it does not get picked up right away. Even if someone else ends up being the one who puts it into practice. What you built still helped to move the idea forward.

I wrote about this, because it’s a topic that has come up time and time again on our podcast and in our livestreams, the gap between discovery and implementation.

I’ve put some thought into this and here are my five top tips to avoid the void:

1. Create replicable toolkits, not just publications – Instead of ending with a journal article (which you should also do), build a simple, practical package around your discovery. Perhaps include a step-by-step guide, sample job descriptions, training slides, case studies, an FAQ, and a cost estimate. Make it easy for service leads, funders, and policy makers to pick up your work and see how it could be applied in their own context, without needing to reinvent it. You could even come on our podcast or livestream to talk about it.
2. Involve implementers from the start – Bring in care staff, service managers, or policy officers as collaborators during the research design stage. Co-producing with the people who would actually use your findings increases both relevance and ownership. It also helps identify real-world constraints early, before they become barriers.
3. Build a dissemination plan that goes beyond academia – Think about how your findings will reach non-academic audiences. Present at practitioner conferences – do the leg work and visit the places you think would benefit. Write for professional magazines. Record short videos or summaries tailored to commissioners, care providers, or third sector organisations. If no one hears about it, no one will use it.
4. Leave something that can live beyond your project – Most research contracts end before change can take hold. Wherever possible, hand over the tools and knowledge to someone who will still be around, or plan your budget to allow you to be around for a while after the study ends. Clinical champions, a local charity partner, or even a staff member in a care setting could help. Plan for continuity, not just completion.
5. Work backwards from adoption – Ask: “What would a commissioner or policy team need to see in order to use this?” Build your evaluation and reporting with that question in mind. That might mean including cost-effectiveness data, implementation case studies, or alignment with national priorities. When your research comes ready-made with answers to practical concerns, adoption becomes far more likely.

So much of this depends on patience and persistence. It is easy to feel disheartened when a promising idea does not take hold. When the space between what we study and what gets used feels too wide. But the effort still matters. Even if the outcome is uncertain. Even if it ends up pointing in a different direction.

What we could do better is treat implementation as part of the work from the beginning. We could learn it. Teach it. Build it into our methods and thinking. Not every idea will be adopted. Some will change. Some will not be right for the moment. But by understanding how ideas move through systems, or fail to, we give our research a better chance of being useful. Even if the result is not quite what we expected.

A final afterthought… if you’re reading this and you’re a research funder, could you help address the problem? If you thought the research was worth funding, and it discovered something that could help people, then it makes sense to support the next step. That might mean funding small-scale implementation, creating follow-on grants, or building in support for adoption from the start. Without that, useful findings often stall before they ever reach the people they were meant to benefit.

Adam Smith

Author

Adam Smith was born in the north, a long time ago. He wanted to write books, but ended up working in the NHS, and at the Department of Health.  He is now Programme Director at University College London (which probably sounds more important than it is – his words). He has led a number of initiatives to improve dementia research (including this website, Join Dementia Research & ENRICH), as well as pursuing his own research interests. In his spare time, he grows vegetables, builds Lego, likes rockets & spends most of his time drinking too much coffee and squeezing technology into his house.

Follow @betterresearch

Follow @betterresearch.bsky.social