Grants by the Bill Gates Foundation have traditionally focused on so-called “technologies” in health care – for example, new vaccines for HIV/AIDS. Recently, however, it has reorganized itself so that in addition to departments for “Discovery” (basic scientific research) and “Development” (developing and testing new technologies based on that research) there is a new one for “Delivery”, which studies how best to get technologies widely adopted and implemented with quality.

This reflects two major themes in the Bethesda conference: first, that getting lots of people to do good things well is the new ‘Holy Grail’ and has the potential to revolutionize health and public services globally, creating massive improvements in public health outcomes; second, that if this vision is to be realized it requires the rapid development of the new field of implementation science.

A sign of the times, and of the desire to move beyond the boos and hisses of colleagues who say this isn’t real research, is the advent of the health care-orientated Journal of Implementation Science.